Pamela: Physicians training for a medical specialty serve as resident staff physicians in hospitals. They work such l...
andreaskormusisAugust 12, 2020
Confusion by the Answer Choice
I understand the programs reasoning for answer choice B, It provides a similar structure as the premises discussing change over time. However, I don't see the correlation between the two subjects. The premise and conclusion both discuss work hours and latency in abilities during shifts, and why they should be changed/ not changed. Yet it seems as though the answer merely discusses patient wellbeing over time. Is the only reason this answer is correct is because it discusses a change from past to present? Because it seems to me that the answer is similar to the premise and while it does seem like a viable answer it seems unrelated.
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Thanks for the question! This one’s a bit tough to see at first, so let’s walk through it together. First, what’s Pamela saying? Well, she’s saying that physicians who serve as resident staff physicians work really long hours, and their fatigue impairs their ability to make the best medical decisions in the final portion of their shifts.
Quincy then responds and basically says nah, lots of people have been trained this way, and they’re doing well overall. So why change it now? It’s been working, so no need to change anything.
Now we’re asked for find an effective counter that Pamela might make to Quincy’s argument, so something that would help her argument or hurt Quincy’s. In other words, this is a weaken question. Let’s say that (B) is true, and that hospital patients are more seriously ill during their stays now than they were in the past (because of medical reimbursement policies, but that’s not super important here). Well, that’s helping distinguish the past from the present. Staff nowadays might have to be dealing with more complicated diseases and more severe conditions, and so they might have more opportunities to mess up, and their mess-ups might be more severe. If that’s true, Quincy’s argument about what happened in the past might not apply, since the present has changed. And that’s why (B) is the correct answer choice here.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
