Time-traveling fiction starts to dig into many interesting issues we might normally avoid thinking about. Perhaps the main difference for the couple lifted out of the nineteenth century is they are sure it’s magic, whereas we have stopped thinking about it, and just take it for granted! Clarke, the prolific futurist and science fiction writer, famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. On reflection, given the centuries of stability, it is amazing how much healthcare has changed in the last 150 years – and one wonders how this accelerating pace of change will proceed in the future.Īrthur C. Implanted defibrillators that use telephone networks and web sites to keep cardiologists up to date with their patients are just magic new pharmaceuticals that change moods, change blood pressure, or kill bacteria: all are modern magic. Does anybody even know how an infusion pump works? They used to be clockwork (and before that, gravity fed) and now almost everything contains a computer and has a colourful screen and lots of buttons. All the hidden technology used in the laboratories behind the scenes, from path labs to decontamination, would be startlingly new if it was noticed.Īlthough the medical culture is similar, there have been dramatic technological changes, and actually these changes would be hard to explain. Infusion pumps, dialysis machines, antibiotics, heart valves, MRI scanners, even hand washing stations would be new ideas. However, the changes that would surprise the nurse and surgeon are all changes to technology. Clinicians would still be in denial, lawyers would still be hovering, and the delay and deny culture would be no surprise. If our two time-travellers were able to attend a post-mortem and listen in on a discussion of human error, very little would seem novel. They might be disappointed in our treatment particularly of old people, but I don’t think it would surprise them.
Patients treated as helpless, stripped of their clothes and possessions, lying in beds and almost completely ignorant of their illness. Pluck a nurse and surgeon out of the nineteenth century and transport them into a modern 21 st century hospital and it would be a thoroughly recognizable place, with the same hierarchies and strict cultures.
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