A future without doctors? Flashcards
bedside manner
the kind and caring behaviour shown by doctors and nurses to people who are ill.
I’ve been reading some inspirational stories about the doctors and nurses fighting Covid. When I was a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a doctor.
Ah, I see. Have you ever been in hospital?
Yes, I have, and I remember the nurse’s bedside manner – you know, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat people who are ill.
Nowadays more and more of the jobs that humans do are being carried out by machines. But I doubt that a doctor’s bedside manner could easily be replaced by a robot.
freckles
small brown or ginger spot on someone’s skin, especially a person with pale skin.
A team of researchers at Stamford last year announced the development of a system that, if you give it a photo of a freckle it can tell you as accurately as twenty-one leading dermatologists whether or not that freckle is cancerous.
The Stanford medical team had invented an AI system to analyse freckles – small brown spots found on people’s skin, especially on pale skin.
cancerous
involving cancer.
As it turned out the AI programme was better than human doctors at telling whether a freckle was harmless or cancerous – connected to some type of cancer.
Freckles are usually harmless, but some skin spots can be cancerous – connected to cancer.
A team of researchers at Stamford last year announced the development of a system that, if you give it a photo of a freckle it can tell you as accurately as twenty-one leading dermatologists whether or not that freckle is cancerous.
diagnosis
a doctor’s judgement about what someone’s particular sickness or disease is, made after examining them.
Most doctors find it difficult to explain how they make a diagnosis – their judgement about what someone’s particular sickness is, made by examining them.
If you ask a doctor how it is they make a diagnosis, they might be able to point you to particularly revealing parts of a reference book or give you a few rules of thumb, but ultimately they’d struggle…
rules of thumb
a useful and practical but approximate way of doing or measuring something.
Diagnosing someone’s illness is complicated but there are some rules of thumb. A rule of thumb is a practical but approximate way of doing something.
For example, when cooking, a good rule of thumb is two portions of water to one portion of rice.
If you ask a doctor how it is they make a diagnosis, they might be able to point you to particularly revealing parts of a reference book or give you a few rules of thumb, but ultimately they’d struggle…
where, how, what, why on earth…?
an emphatic way of forming a statement or question to show frustration, anger, surprise or disbelief.
Exactly. And because identifying sickness is so difficult, Daniel says “where on earth do we begin writing instructions for a machine?” We use phrases like where, how or what on earth to show feelings like anger, surprise or disbelief.
if a human being can’t explain how they do these special things, where on earth do we begin in writing instructions for a machine to follow?
