Working for manufacturer engineering couple years. Sharing the manufacturing experience, skill, DFx, design, and information. Be care of this blog is personal share and content may not be 100% correctly.
When you think about it, doctors are really just engineers who work on people instead of machines. Their methods and processes are surprisingly similar. So, engineers — you’re basically doctors too, just with different patients!
Einstein once said, “An expert is just a trained dog.” Workingbear can’t really argue with that. In fact, Workingbear believes doctors are, in essence, engineers. The main difference is what they work on: engineers deal with non-living things like machines or products, while doctors deal with living humans — that’s about it.
Of course, engineers usually don’t face the same kind of pressure doctors do. If a product can’t be fixed, it can just be scrapped. But a doctor with true compassion can’t just “discard” a patient. Unfortunately, Workingbear has seen a few doctors who treat people like defective products, and that’s a scary thought.
Engineers, on the other hand, often face a different kind of pressure — deadlines and delivery schedules. Maybe the company is rushing to ship a product, or a customer demands a fix right away. Repairing expensive machines can be stressful too. So both doctors and engineers carry their own kinds of pressure in their work.
Workingbear isn’t trying to look down on doctors — far from it. Workingbear knows medical students spend at least three more years in school than most engineering students. The point is: if a doctor loses compassion and integrity, they’re no different from an engineer fixing machines. On the flip side, engineers shouldn’t think they’re “beneath” doctors either. In many ways, the work engineers do is just as complex and valuable. If you’re truly skilled in your field, you’re a highly capable “doctor of technology.”
There are actually many similarities between medicine and engineering. For example, when a product fails before reaching the customer, engineers call it DOA — Dead on Arrival. Interestingly, doctors use the same term to describe patients who die before reaching the hospital.
Let’s take a closer look at how similar their problem-solving steps really are:
Engineer’s Repair Process
Doctor’s Diagnostic Process
Listen to the customer’s description of the defect or symptom to guess possible causes.
Ask the patient to describe symptoms — coughing, sore throat, stomach pain, etc.
Perform a visual inspection or use instruments to confirm the defect or others.
Examine the patient’s throat with a light, or use ultrasound to check the abdomen or others.
If the problem is serious, use X-ray inspection or instruments like oscilloscopes or multimeters to find circuit issues.
If it’s serious, perform blood tests, ultrasound, X-rays, CT scans, or ECGs to locate the problem.
Once the problem is confirmed, repair or replace faulty parts according to manuals or experience.
After identifying the cause, prescribe medicine, perform surgery, or even replace an organ if necessary.
After repair, run full tests to ensure the product works properly.
After treatment, observe if the patient recovers — though many “recoveries” are assumed just because the patient doesn’t come back!
Follow up with the customer to make sure the issue is really solved (common in industries like automotive or semiconductors under IATF 16949).
Some doctors now follow up via text or phone to check recovery status, especially for major illnesses.
See how similar those steps are? Experienced engineers can often pinpoint problems quickly and get things running again — just like skilled doctors who diagnose accurately and treat efficiently. On the other hand, an inexperienced technician or careless doctor might fumble around, run endless tests, and still not fix the issue.
So next time you see a doctor, ask questions. If something doesn’t make sense, clarify it or look it up later. And before any major surgery, it’s often smart to get a second (or even third) opinion — just like you’d want more than one expert to check a critical piece of equipment.
But remember — doctors are human too. Be polite and respectful when asking questions. You don’t want to “offend the engineer” fixing your body, or you might end up with more problems than you started with!
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