Medical knowledge in 2020

Further to this post which opened with this sentence – “One of our readers, a retired GP, once told us that he’d once read that, on average, it takes 17 years for medical breakthroughs to become common medical practice!!!.

One of our readers, who practiced as a NSW solicitor for more than 30 years, often tells us he’s surprised that the way in the medical profession works is not more like the way in which the legal professions works.

In the legal profession there are “barristers,” who, in addition to doing court work, spend time advising solicitors, so that when a solicitor starts feeling out of his or her depth, they say, “Let’s brief a barrister,” and they prepare a “brief’ in which they set out the areas in which they need help and send it off to a barrister who has a reputation for having expertise in the area concerned, who, in due course, provides an “opinion,” – it’s called “chamber work.”

They don’t actually ever see clients, the solicitor sees the client all the way through, with help from the barrister’s opinions – they just spend their time keeping up to date in their areas of specialisation, and writing opinions.

One thing seems to be certain, and that is that barristers doing chamber work would know  about significant developments in the law in a lot less than 17 years, and would be passing details of these developments on to solicitors who briefed them, where appropriate.

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