Social Media Encourages Initiators in Medicine

Funny how the blogosphere echoes some of the thoughts that have been incubating in my own mind… A few posts have caught my eye recently. One that I have been meaning to comment on was Dr. Vartabedian’s piece “Do You Initiate or Respond?” which characterizes physicians, in general, as trained responders rather than initiators [give it a look, it’s a quick read].

I had myself been concurrently pondering the same idea (though classifying it as reactive versus proactive in my own mind, but we mean the same thing). As Dr. V points out, doctors are reflexive and very much good at it.  We are nimble thinkers on our feet when faced with problems, calculating a large number of variables to try solve problems in -let’s face it- a very short period of time, all the while doing our best to navigate through a myriad of emotions along the way. The importance of this…