Abstract
Whenever Doctor Who regenerates, the doctor’s physical appearance and personality change but he retains something deeper. The best way to describe it would be to say that the essence of Doctor Who is untouched. I’d say his humanity except that Doctor Who isn’t human. He is, of course, a Time Lord, an extraterrestrial being who began his public service as a somewhat impersonal man with all the answers and is now a more self-doubting compassionate soul, compassionate enough to be reincarnated as a woman – a personal journey that mirrors how a doctor’s role has evolved.
Alastair Denniston and colleagues draw comparisons with Doctor Who’s regenerations in explaining how medical doctors will need to adapt to rapid advances in artificial intelligence. 1 They believe that the benefits for patients of artificial intelligence and machine learning far outweigh any challenges to the authority of doctors. Doctors of the future will be very different to the doctors of today in what they do, but their humanity and desire to do the best for patients will be untouched. Indeed, doctors will be assisted by robots of advanced artificial intelligence but still governed by a version of Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. Many a true word is spoken in fiction.
Even if robots don’t solve the workforce crisis, perhaps pharmacists will? Benedict Heyhoe and colleagues remind us that, among other consequences, workload and time pressures exacerbate prescribing errors. One solution for the NHS, backed by international experience, is to increase integration of pharmacists into primary care to make use of their expertise in medicines management. 2 A successful pilot programme involving 490 pharmacists has persuaded the NHS in England to invest £100m for a further 1500 clinical pharmacists to work in general practice by 2021.
However a doctor’s role might change in future years, it is important that doctors retain a desire to ask questions. Those questions might relate to the quality and integrity of the research that they are basing their clinical decisions on.3,4 That inquisitiveness should certainly include addressing uncomfortable topics, such as domestic violence and abuse. In an impassioned plea, Natasha Davendralingam 5 explains how doctors can give a voice to those who no longer feel they have one.