This article on how Internet use has affected our ability to remember things is pretty interesting, if not exactly surprising. Researchers have found that we tend to remember things we can't look up on the Internet, and forget things we know we'll be able to retrieve electronically. We're also better at remembering where we store information—in this case, which folder we stashed a bit of info in on a hard drive—than we are the bit of info itself.
While it's not a new idea, it does confirm what CME providers have been saying for a long time, that since healthcare providers can't possibly remember everything they need to know, what they need to learn is where and how to find what they need to know when they need to know it. The biggest revelation seems to be that we're using the Internet as "our primary external storage system," but we all knew that already, didn't we?
