Docs Struggle to Keep Up With New Medical Knowledge. Here's Advice

The amount of medical knowledge is said to double every 73 days, making it much tougher for physicians to identify innovative findings and newer guidelines for helping patients. Yet not keeping up with the latest information can put doctors at risk.

"Most doctors are feeling lost about keeping up to date," said John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. "The vast majority of new studies are either wrong or not useful, but physicians cannot sort out which are those studies."

The sheer number of new studies may even force some doctors to retreat from areas where they have not kept up, said Stephen A. Martin, MD, professor of family medicine and community health at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. "When doctors don't feel they can stay current, they may refer more cases to specialists or narrow their focus," he said.

Some Specialties Have a Greater Challenge Than Others

Martin said the deluge of studies heavily impacts generalists because they have a wider field of information to keep up with. However, certain specialties like oncology are particularly flooded with new findings.

Specialties with the greatest number of published studies are reportedly oncology, cardiology, and neurology. A 2021 study found that the number of articles with the word "stroke" in them increased five times from 2000 to 2020. And investigative treatments targeting cancer nearly quadrupled just between 2010 and 2020.

What's more, physicians spend a great deal of time sifting through studies that are ultimately useless. In a survey of internists by Univadis, which is part of WebMD/Medscape, 82% said that fewer than half of the studies they read actually had an impact on how they practice medicine.

"You often have to dig into an article and learn more about a finding before you now whether it's useful," Martin said. "And in the end, relatively few new findings are truly novel ones that are useful for patient care."

So What Can a Physician Do? First, Find Out What You Don't Know

Looking for new findings needs to be carried out systematically, according to William B. Cutrer, MD, MEd, a pediatric intensivist who is associate dean for undergraduate medical education at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Before you start, you have to know what you don't know, and that's often not so easy," he said. "You may get a spark about what you don't know in an encounter with a patient or colleague or through patient outcomes data," he said.

Martin, on the other hand, advocates a broad approach that involves finding out at least a little about everything in one's field. "If you have a good base, you're not starting from zero when you encounter a new clinical situation," he said.

"The idea is that you don't need to memorize most things, but you do need to know how to access them," Martin said. "I memorize the things I do all the time, such as dosing or indicated testing, but I look up things that I don't see that often and ones that have some complexity."

Updating the Old Ways

For generations, doctors have stayed current by going to meetings, conversing with colleagues, and reading journals, but many physicians have updated these methods through various resources on the internet.

For example, meetings went virtual during the pandemic, and now that face-to-face meetings are back, many of them retain a virtual option, said Kevin Campbell, MD, a cardiologist at Health First Medical Group in Melbourne, Florida. "I typically go to one or two conferences a year, but I also learn a lot digitally," he said.

As to journal reading, "assessing an article is an essential skill," Cutrer said. "It's important to quickly decide whether a journal article is worth reading or not. One answer to this problem is to consult summaries of important articles. But summaries are sometimes unhelpful and it is hard to know which articles are significant. Therefore, doctors have been reaching out to others who can research the articles for them."

For many years, some physicians have pooled their resources in journal clubs. "You get a chance to cross-cultivate your skills with others," Ioannidis said. "But you need someone who is well informed and dedicated to run the journal club, using evidence-based principles."

Cutrer said physicians like to cast their net wide because they are understandably wary of changing their practice based on one study. "Unless there is one large study that is really well designed, doctors will need two or more findings to be convinced," he said. This requires having the ability to match studies across many journals.

Using Research Summaries

In the past two decades, physicians have gained access to countless summaries of journal articles prepared by armies of clinical experts working for review services such as the New England Journal of Medicine's "Journal Watch," Annals of Internal Medicine's "In the Clinic," and BMJ's "State of the Arts."

In addition to summarizing findings from a wide variety of journals in plain language, reviewers may compare them to similar studies and assess the validity of the finding by assigning a level of evidence.

Some commercial ventures provide similar services. Betsy Jones, executive vice president of clinical decisions at EBSCO, said the DynaMed service is now available through an app on the physician's smartphone or through the electronic health record (EHR).

Physicians like this approach. Many specialists have noted that reading full-length articles was not an efficient use of their time, while even more said that reviews are efficient.

Exchanging Information Online

Physicians are increasingly keeping current by using the internet, especially on social media, Cutrer said. "Young doctors in particular are more likely to keep up digitally," he said.

Internet-based information has become so widespread that disparities in healthcare from region to region have somewhat abated, according to Stuart J. Fischer, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Summit Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Summit, New Jersey. "One positive outcome of this plethora of information today is that geographic disparities in clinical practice are not as great as they used to be," he said.

Rather than chatting up colleagues in the hallway, many physicians have come to rely on internet-based discussion boards.

Blogs, Podcasts, and Twitter

Blogs and podcasts, often focused on a specialty, can be a great way for physicians to keep up, said UMass Chan professor Martin. "Podcasts in particular have enhanced the ability to stay current," he said. "You want to find someone you trust."

Internal medicine podcasts include Annals on Call, where doctors discuss articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Curbsiders, where two internists interview a guest expert.

Orthopedic surgeons can visit podcasts like Nailed it, Orthobullets, the Ortho Show, and Inside Orthopedics. Neurologists can consult Brainwaves, Neurology Podcast, Practical Neurology Podcast, and Clinical Neurology with KD. And pediatricians can drop in on Talking Pediatrics, The Cribsiders, and PedsCases.

Meanwhile, Twitter has become a particularly effective way to broadcast new findings, speeding up the transition from the bench to the bedside, said Campbell, the Florida cardiologist.

"I visit cardio-specific resources on Twitter," he said. "They can be real-time video chats or posted messages. They spur discussion like a journal club. Colleagues present cases and drop in and out of the discussion."

Others are not as enthusiastic. Although Stanford's Ioannidis is in the heart of the Silicon Valley, he is leery of some of the new digital methods. "I don't use Twitter," he says. "You just add more people to the process, which could only make things more confusing. I want to be able to think a lot about it."

Cutting-Edge Knowledge at the Point of Care

Consulting the literature often takes place at the point of care, when a particular patient requires treatment. This can be done by using clinical decision support (CDS) and by using clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), which are typically developed by panels of doctors at specialty societies.

"It used to be that the doctor was expected to know everything," said Jones at DynaMed. "Today there is no way to keep up with it all. Doctors often need a quick memory jog."

Jones said the CDS result always requires the doctor's interpretation. "It is up to the doctor to decide whether a new finding is the best choice for his or her patient," she said.

Martin recommends going easy on point-of-care resources. "They can be used for showing a patient a differential diagnosis list or checking the cost of a procedure, but they are harder to use for novel developments that require time and context to evaluate their impact," he said.

CPGs, meanwhile, have a high profile in the research world. In a 2018 study, Ioannidis found that 8 of the 15 most-cited articles were CPGs, disease definitions, or disease statistics.

Fischer said CPGs are typically based on thorough reviews of the literature, but they do involve experts' interpretation of the science. "It can be difficult to obtain specific answers to some medical questions, especially for problems with complex treatments or variations," he said.

As a result, Fischer said doctors have to use their judgment in applying CPGs to a specific patient. "For example, the orthopedic surgeon would normally recommend a total hip replacement for patients with a bad hip, but it might not be appropriate for an overweight patient."

Stay Skeptical

There are many novel ways for physicians to keep current, including summaries of articles, discussion boards, blogs, podcasts, Twitter, clinical decision support, and clinical practice guidelines.

Even with all these new services, though, doctors need to retain a healthy amount of skepticism about new research findings, Ioannidis said. "Ask yourself questions such as: Does it deal with a real problem? Am I getting the real information? Is it relevant to real patients? Is it offering good value for money?"

Leigh Page has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

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