What is it that you don't know you don't know?

[MediMike]

Hey guys/gals...so a statement I've heard repeated both online and with docs I've talked to is that P.A.s don't know what they don't know. I was curious what situations you, as professionals P.A.s, have run into where you got stumped and had to refer to your SP/specialist where a doc in your field would not have had to. I'd like to get an idea of the depth where the P.A. curriculum and the M.D./D.O. curriculum diverge. Disclaimer of this is not an attack on knowledge or a poke at the field by any means, just a bit of curiousity!

[Contrarian]

Its typically used as a "put down" to cast aspersions on the quality of ANY "non-physician" training.

 

The implication seems to be that ALL non-physicians practice "cook-book" care (they try to avoid calling it medicine) and therefore will plow ahead with the ancerebral algorhythmic approach despite the need to tread cautiously and maybe do some research. The idea here is that one must be a "physician" to progress one's practice from "rote-->reason."

 

Because surely this is the practice of medicine as was granted soley to physicians alone by divine providence.

 

The statement implies that there is some mystical, magical info that ONLY physicians know and ONLY physicians are able to access it or ONLY physicians will even know when to access it due to them being physicians.

 

Simple fact of the matter is ... ALL providers "get stumped," not a one knows everything about medicine and they ALL "consult" when they are unsure about something/anything.

 

The statement "P.A.s don't know what they don't know" is pure "Tool-ery/A$$hatery."

 

Cause I know that I don't know "Jack Schitt" about Oncology, and very little about Hematology beyond the interpretation of common labs.

Thing is... when I come upon these and other areas where I KNOW I have a knowledge deficit... I LOOK IT UP and/or REFER to a specialist (Like 999.999% of ALL physicians do!!!).

See... I do know what I don't know...:wink:

[EMEDPA]

after about 5 yrs as an em pa I noticed that anytime I had a question that I didn't know the answer to my sp didn't know the answer either and they said call the xyz specialist. now for the most part I just cut out the middleman and go right to the specialist unless I know a particular doc knows more than the avg em doc about a particular subject( for example I used to work with an er doc who was a urologist in a former life, another who was ortho, and another who was gen. surg).

 

[h=1]“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”- Mark Twain[/h]

[MediMike]

Hahaha nice gentlemen. To throw in a bit from another thread, EM I spent a fair amount of time dinking around on SDN today, and I've got to say you have the patience of a saint. So what it comes down to is (gasp) much like M.D.s, if you're stumped you punt to a specialist.

[KCMA79]

I'm not so sure it is a matter of "P.A.s don't know what they don't know" as much as a PA not knowing when they are in over their head and not realizing what they don't know. I hope that makes sense.

 

The divergence in the two curriculums comes in the length and depth of didactic and clinical education.

 

If you are going to be a PA you just learn to sometimes put up with PITA docs. It goes with the terr.

[SocialMedicine]

you dont know what you dont ready and study. every day I am reading more about my area of medicine. There is no medical school course you cannot make up for by reading on your own free time. It might be hard to make up for the experience of residency .... but after 10 or so years of patient care, especially if you are at a training facility with rounds experience etc. The question you posed is misguided in my opinion.