Generalization And Specialization In Industry

820 Words4 Pages
Who is taking care of the patient? Specialization vs. generalization. ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Current procedures for approving new medical specialties favour specialization rather than generalization. With a more efficient use of current specialists, resources could be freed up for the development of new and more generalists' domains to meet the needs of specific populations - a process that has been difficult to achieve because of the existing procedural barriers which hinder the demarcation of new generalist expertise [49]. Emerging specialties have to demonstrate that they represent a well-defined field of medical practice in their own right [50]. This requirement will be especially hard to satisfy for the proposed generalist domains, since their underlying knowledge will be broad and will overlap with the vested ones. The absence of a clear definition of the field may explain the relatively low prestige of branches of medicine such as geriatrics, intensive care and emergency medicine. Existing professional procedures frustrate the opportunity for such specialties to build their own professional bodies and colleges. A few months afterwards I was thinking about the concept of “jack of all trades and master of none” and wondered if that was really true or not. After all, why can’t someone be good at many things? Who says a person has to stick with only one thing to be successful? ------------------------------------------------- My basic point is that everyone is both a specialist and a generalist at the same time. There’s nothing wrong with being able to do more than one thing. Generalization also has its downside, however. When you generalize, you lose the advantages associated with being recognized as an "expert" on a particular subject. Specialization is boring and too
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