How in-depth have you looked at the studies about declining performance in doctors with age? An obvious alternative hypothesis is that doctors gain skill as they age, and therefore tend to take on higher-risk patients and procedures with worse outcomes. I am not saying that’s what’s going on here—I’d just like to know if this is something you’ve looked into.
I considered that early on during my exploration, but didn’t go deep into it after seeing Scott’s comment on his post saying:
These comparisons held positions (specialist vs. generalist) constant. Aside from whether someone is a specialist or not, I don’t think there’s any tendency for older doctors to get harder cases.
Now, after seeing that the other fields also match the same pattern of decline, I’d be somewhat surprised by evidence that taking on harder cases explained the majority of skill plateaus in middle age for doctors.
How in-depth have you looked at the studies about declining performance in doctors with age? An obvious alternative hypothesis is that doctors gain skill as they age, and therefore tend to take on higher-risk patients and procedures with worse outcomes. I am not saying that’s what’s going on here—I’d just like to know if this is something you’ve looked into.
I considered that early on during my exploration, but didn’t go deep into it after seeing Scott’s comment on his post saying:
Now, after seeing that the other fields also match the same pattern of decline, I’d be somewhat surprised by evidence that taking on harder cases explained the majority of skill plateaus in middle age for doctors.