Are medical students and new doctors overly reliant on tests and technology to make diagnoses?

• Radiology tests have become a crutch: Doctors in training are no longer taught how to distinguish patients who need testing from those who don’t.
• A decade ago, a surgeon would spend time interviewing and carefully examining a patient to help decide if he or she needed a CT.
• Now, many surgeons, especially the younger ones, won’t see a patient until the CT is complete.
• Testing has become more of a reflex than a higher-level decision
• Physical exam training can be undone the moment the students hit their clinical years.
• They discover that the currency on the ward seems to be “throughout” — getting tests ordered and getting results, having procedures like colonoscopies done expeditiously, calling in specialists, arranging discharge. And the engine for all of that, indeed the place where the dialogue between doctors and nurses takes place, is the computer.
• It seems that medical students today are spoiled by the easy access to the latest in imaging equipment and medical technology, and have become less dependent on physical exam skills previously relied upon in the past.
• That, perhaps, is the bigger driver to the increased reliance on tests, rather than the threat of a malpractice lawsuit.

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