Editor - One of the worst things about being a medical student is being bombarded with health questions from friends and family that you cannot answer.

But now, as a fourth year student, I have the answers to some of those questions. how? I've just finished a three week placement in general practice. And on my return to hospital training I am better able to challenge some of the negative attitudes that I have encountered about GP's from hospital doctors for so long.

The aim of medical school, it seems, is to turn out generalists who specialise later in their careers. Why, then, do we spend so much time with specialists and so little time with perhaps the only true generalists left?

On a similar note, I've been disappointed to discover that medical schools still demand A level chemistry from prospective students and that many schools encourage the study of other science A level subjects as well. Being a doctor probably does require above average levels of intelligence, but it does not require a great aptitude for science. We are not trying to create eminent scientists out of medical students, but good doctors who can relate to others and apply their intelligence to different life situations: subjects more relevant might be sociology or history, any of the arts in fact.

In my own experience chemistry A level has not been useful. Studying in east London, the most practically relevant of my A levels has been French when dealing with patients who are immigrants from west Africa and other French speaking countries.

We may be missing out on lots of people who might make good doctors, but who at the age of 16 have not yet made career decisions and so do not choose the right A level subjects for medicine. Or else we force some prospective students into two years of A level study in which they may have little interest.