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I wanted to ask House fans with any kind of medical background: are real doctors expected to have as much encyclopedic knowledge of even rare diseases as Dr. Ho

I wanted to ask House fans with any kind of medical background: are real doctors expected to have as much encyclopedic knowledge of even rare diseases as Dr. House seems to display? My own experience with MDs, in good hospitals, was that they misdiagnose even simple and common things, that they should have been able to diagnose correctly, given the symptoms.

chc 16y ago
I'm no doctor, but even on the show, House's expertise is portrayed as extraordinary.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  And he still gets it wrong at least three times an episode (twice if there's a compelling personal narrative to fit in as well).
robryan 16y ago
I guess it would be similar in a way to how many algorithms/methods you are able to use from memory without referring to a reference in programming. I think we have a tenancy to assume people from other professions are super human experts while knowing that even after years of experience in our own there is still a lot of times reference material needs to be looked at.
ugh 16y ago
House is a diagnostics expert, not just a MD.
- nearestneighbor 16y ago
  I didn't realize that "diagnostics" was a medical specialty.
  - ugh 16y ago
    He is head of the diagnostics department (which consists of him and his team). And – as he says in the pilot – they are looking for zebras [1], not horses. By the time patients get to him all the horses have already been ruled out. I don’t know whether something like that exists in reality. That would be interesting to know. It at least sounds plausible. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine)
    - nearestneighbor 16y ago
      It should be easy to check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medical_specialties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medical_specialties and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_(medicine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_(medicine)
gte910h 16y ago
I was so happy to see a doctor of mine go look things up: Human memory is not a good database. Repeat that 100 times.

chc 16y ago

I'm no doctor, but even on the show, House's expertise is portrayed as extraordinary.

JacobAldridge 16y ago
And he still gets it wrong at least three times an episode (twice if there's a compelling personal narrative to fit in as well).

robryan 16y ago

I guess it would be similar in a way to how many algorithms/methods you are able to use from memory without referring to a reference in programming. I think we have a tenancy to assume people from other professions are super human experts while knowing that even after years of experience in our own there is still a lot of times reference material needs to be looked at.

ugh 16y ago

House is a diagnostics expert, not just a MD.

nearestneighbor 16y ago
I didn't realize that "diagnostics" was a medical specialty.
- ugh 16y ago
  He is head of the diagnostics department (which consists of him and his team). And – as he says in the pilot – they are looking for zebras [1], not horses. By the time patients get to him all the horses have already been ruled out. I don’t know whether something like that exists in reality. That would be interesting to know. It at least sounds plausible. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine)
  - nearestneighbor 16y ago
    It should be easy to check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medical_specialties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medical_specialties and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_(medicine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_(medicine)

gte910h 16y ago

I was so happy to see a doctor of mine go look things up: Human memory is not a good database. Repeat that 100 times.