JOURNAL DISCUSSION Convincing Physicians to Report Communicable Diseases

The lecturer stands at the podium presenting his newest and most exciting research findings to a room full of eager medical students. Ten hands shoot into the air, and every mind in the room turns over the ideas that have been put before them. What you will find at medical schools across the country on any given morning—an eagerness to question authority and think beyond what is presented—is a quality that physicians have in common with other human beings, but one that is often more highly rewarded in medical education. The ability to question those who present absolutes before us will be our greatest strength when new discoveries are sought and our greatest weakness when it comes time to contributing to the common body of knowledge by reporting to a disease registry. When I think about my fellow medical students and myself, I wonder whether our questioning and challenging of everything we are told is motivated by a desire to know as much as possible about specific disease processes or by some implicit understanding that cultivating this skepticism for its own sake will benefit our patients in the long run. In a 2006 article in Public Health Reports, the authors o