If you haven’t experienced it yet, you will.

For our younger readers, a little background is in order. “Doogie Howser, M.D.” was a television show that ran from 1989 to 1993 about a sixteen-year-old whiz kid who breezed through college and medical school and got on the staff at a prestigious hospital. At the time, I thought it was preposterous fiction. I now realize it was a documentary.

It seemed fictional because back in my day, way back in the last century, doctors were wise old men. (They were nearly always men; female physicians were extremely rare.) Doctors occupied a position of respect and reverence somewhere between the president and God.

Doctors knew everything, and they were never wrong. We had no qualms about trusting them with our lives. If your doctor had a cigarette dangling from his lips while examining your strep throat, you didn’t object. Heck, they even prescribed that their diabetic patients take up smoking as a way to curb appetites. The doctor said it. Who were we to question it?

As I grew older, the first time I saw a doctor younger than my parents I felt some reservations. Then, my trusted old medical sages began to retire. Granted, when the old guy whose perception and judgment your life depended on started going around wearing plaid pants with striped shirts, hair growing two inches out of his ears, and gravy stains on his lab coat, maybe it was time to hang up the stethoscope.

Gradually, that left us in the hands of a younger generation. Still, I was shocked the first time I saw a doctor about my age. I couldn’t help but think about some of my classmates from high school. Could some of those goofballs be off doctoring people somewhere? Did this doctor even know any more than I did?

And the Doogie Effect spread. My caregivers started being younger than me. I wasn’t quite so willing to trust them unquestioningly. Besides, we don’t have to trust our doctors so much because now we can diagnose ourselves with sources like WebMD.com, MayoClinic.com, and YouHaveEveryDiseaseKnownToMan.com. In my experience, doctors really appreciate the time saved when we immediately tell them what our ailment is. At least I think that’s a look of appreciation. Not only that, there are so many pharmaceutical commercials on television that we can tell them exactly how to treat us.

There’s no changing the fact that my healthcare providers will keep getting younger. And I have to admit that these younger folks have pretty much kept me alive these past few years. Still, I can’t help but have my concerns.

Do the medical students of today learn how to help a patient who is feeling puny or has the vapors?

Can they tell the difference between chilblains and scrumpox on a video appointment?

Do they know how to treat abrasions by slathering them with a fiery orange tincture known as monkey blood?

And if schools are no longer teaching cursive, how will a new doctor be able to scrawl illegibly on a prescription pad?

Now when I’m in a waiting room, I’m not sure if that’s my new doctor or some other patient’s kid walking by. No matter, I guess we’ll all get by. Come to think of it, Doogie Howser himself would be in his mid-50s by now. I wonder if he calls this “The Me Effect?”

And life goes on, in a never-ending youth movement. Besides, as none other than that icon of youthful rebellion, Pete Townsend, said on The Who’s first album in 1965, “The Kids are Alright.”