Are we training the right people for medicine?
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.
karen Tipples, fourth year medical student, St Bartholomew's and The Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Email: k.j.tipples@mds.qmw.ac.uk
studentBMJ 2001;09:217-260 July ISSN 0966-6494
