Blog post: ajb: Do medical students need physics?

Well, Professor Sir Peter Knight, President of the Institute of Physics say they do...

Professor Sir Peter Knight

As I see it there are at least two areas that knowing a little physics can go a long way

• Medical devices
  
• Biomechanics
  

Not that we need all medical doctors to be experts in the above, but having some grasp of the physics behind the tools they use and the basic phsyics of the body would, in my opinion, be a good thing.

Slightly wider than just medical students, I am often suprised by just how little mathematics and physics typical biology students known.

On the 18th April five articles were publiched in the Lancet that discuss the historical links between physics and medicine. This I think is a shame. That said, I have no great knowledge of biology!

This reminds me of the idea of evidence based medicine. Which is basically using the ethos of the scientific method to make informed evidenced based treatments. My experience of medicine is a mix of dogma, experience and informed guesses. Anyway, I think a post on evidence based medicine is outside of my remit at the moment.

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