William Aird, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“THE GASTRO-ONC THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
A follow-up to yesterday’s question about why hematology and oncology became paired, when oncology overlaps with so many other specialties.
Try this ‘Black Mirror’ thought experiment.
Imagine a parallel universe in which oncology evolved as a branch of gastroenterology. A fellow dreams of becoming a breast oncologist.
On day one of fellowship, she is immersed in reflux disease, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic diarrhea, constipation, liver disease, and pancreatic disorders.
To us, this feels strange. But to that fellow, it feels ordinary. Now come back to our own system.
A future breast oncologist spends part of fellowship learning about hemophilia, sickle cell disease, thalassemia, immune thrombocytopenia, inherited platelet disorders, and thrombotic microangiopathies.
To us, this feels normal. But only because it is the structure we inherited. Specialty boundaries often feel inevitable only after history has made them familiar.
Of course hematology and oncology overlap.
So do many specialties. The more interesting question is whether, if we were designing training from scratch today, we would organize it the same way.”
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