Medical schools used to be places where you’d slowly dissect a cadaver, learn about diseases and find out which way round your stethoscope goes in your ears. You’d meet up in the pub with your friends and have a laugh and share heroic medical stories on the way home, but Professor Candid has other ideas.
The new curriculum will isolate and indoctrinate
‘The thought of junior doctors going on strike makes us want to wet our pants,’ explains Prof, ‘and by “us” I mean the political elite. So I was tasked to revisit the medical school curriculum to nip this in the bud.’
Professor Candid’s plan is to introduce ‘fear’, ‘obedience’ and ‘resilience’ modules into an already packed curriculum.
‘The new curriculum will isolate and indoctrinate,’ explains Prof, ‘med students will spend their tender young lives reflecting, ticking boxes and worrying about references rather than getting on with the serious business of learning and having a bit of fun. They’ll be so bogged down in paperwork and so worried about getting an FY1 post within a hundred miles of their flat that they won’t have time to think, let alone go to the pub. And to crown it all they’ll be engaged in an endless cycle of legitimised peer review which used to be called grassing-up.’
‘The state pays for their education,’ continues Prof, ‘so they had jolly well better man-up, tow the line and start doing what the state tells them. If, God forbid, you should ever take the politics out of the health service you’ll end up with a confident profession teeming with dedicated young men and women doing the best for their eternally grateful patients. And who on earth wants that?’
’You will obey,’ concludes Prof, ’And you will be afraid. Now if it’s ok could I ask you to fill out one of my feedback forms, my appraisal’s due and I’ve been told I have to do at least ten of them.’
Dr Kevin Hinkley is a GP in Edinburgh
