An axiom in medicine is that good judgment depends on experience, and experience depends on bad judgment. Basically, one way doctors refine their care is through a learning curve resulting from inexperience and lack of judgment.
A fitting example during the COVID-19 pandemic was the worldwide experience with ventilators, which are used to support lung function in patients with serious COVID-19 pneumonia.
Viruses or bacteria that invade the lungs and cause pneumonia impair the body’s ability to take in oxygen. When this becomes severe, it is known as hypoxemia (this is what those finger oximeters measure.) In advanced hypoxemia, patients experience shortness of breath. If it worsens they will be unable to breathe. At that point, doctors will insert a tube in the windpipe and attach the tube to a ventilator, which takes over a patient’s breathing until the lungs heal.
