Why don't we teach medical students a little, er, medicine?

This is only an improptu and adhoc comment; I have no exposure to your system. One - The medical curriculam (all curricula) must include moral science. Two - Admission to medical courses should be restricted to paramedics, i.e. entry to medical education be after studying paramedical courses. Narayana Bhat

Re comment above, recruiting a bunch of ambulance drivers should really sort the profession out! David Wearden

Thanks for that! As a final year medical student, I'm really glad you regard my colleagues and I so highly. No wonder we're inclined to go to the library on occasion instead of spending time with our super-enthusiastic teachers. Of course, any effort to learn some facts - not forthcoming from sitting in a GP surgery corner being ignored - is met with the sarcastic comment that you can't learn anything from books, only from seeing patients. The GP component of my course is set up as if hospital doctors (and therefore, us, during hospital attachments), never see patients or make a diagnosis, let alone be compassionate in conversation. I can tell you, from my observations of both, that hospital doctors (which I wish to become) convey a degree of empathy, compassion and concern for the wellbeing of their acutely ill patients, far outstripping anything I've ever seen in General Practice. How ironic, considering that the main objectives of our GP training are communication based. Luckily, I feel both communication and medicine may be covered at my new GP placement - perhaps I will actually learn something useful, rather than sitting through endless clinics being re-told the same information and basically just having my time occupied for the sake of it. While you're complaining, how about considering whether the effort you put in to teaching your students is in anyway valuable to them, is of a sufficient depth to progress their knowledge or replicates their previous teaching. At the end of my previous 4-week GP course, I can honestly say that I learnt absolutely nothing within clinical hours. Absolutely nothing. At all. I like patients, and I'm a great attender, but there is more medicine to learn than ever before, and frankly, rather than spending time at a hostile and uniformative placement, I'd rather be in the library some of the time with a book. Hospital attachments understand this. Some GP attachments understand this. But the emphasis of the course is on communication, and you can't learn that from a book. So - the situation is thus - the student's attendance is inversely proportional to the time he/she has available to actually learn something useful. Food for thought. nicola

Medical students come in two different flavours - the super-enthusiastic keeny (who used to put me to shame) and the super-bored. I have to admit that whilst I was at medical school I was one of the super-bored. This was only because my placements had little in the way of educational value and apart from the odd bedside grilling and consultant style beasting my pulse rarely went above 50 (unless a cute nurse walked past!). So a medical student needs to be nurtured and educated and challenged by people who really care about them, otherwise their little faces become pale and their eyes cloud over and they head off to the library! (Which means the canteen by the way!). Kev