Department of Bioethics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Med Anthropol. 2020 Apr;39(3):255-268. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2019.1640220. Epub 2019 Jul 23.
Given the vastness of bioscientific knowledge and regular changes in evidence and protocol, how do individual clinicians make decisions about what to know and what to ignore? In this article I identify a process termed "sufficient knowledge:" the prioritizing of medical knowledge perceived as most important, while ignoring information that is not deemed essential or applicable. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork at an allopathic medical school in the American Midwest, I describe three typologies of sufficient knowledge that medical students devised to distinguish what to know and what to ignore or deemphasize: high yield knowledge, low yield knowledge and "rabbit holes." I aim here to contribute to a growing topical and theoretical discussion of ignorance by social scientists, especially to generate a more balanced picture of physician training and practice beyond depictions of knowledge and expertise.
鉴于生物科学知识的广泛性以及证据和方案的定期变化，个体临床医生如何决定了解什么和忽略什么？在本文中，我确定了一个称为“足够知识”的过程：优先考虑被认为最重要的医学知识，同时忽略那些被认为不重要或不适用的信息。本研究利用在美国中西部的一所传统医学学校进行的为期 14 个月的民族志实地调查，描述了医学生设计的三种区分了解什么和忽略或淡化什么的足够知识类型：高收益知识、低收益知识和“兔子洞”。我在这里的目的是为社会科学家对无知的日益增长的专题和理论讨论做出贡献，特别是要超越对知识和专业知识的描述，更全面地描绘医生的培训和实践。
