New house officers lack clinical skills

Editor - Whatever happened to applying the adage, “See one, do one, teach one?” If the results of the Sheffield survey can be generalised to medical students as a whole, they only add to the existing weaknesses in clinical skills of tomorrow's doctors.¹ Namely, diagnostic inaccuracy with an increasing reliance on computerised decision support, and errors in patient management due to medical reasoning biases (see, for example, Medical Decision Making 2000; 20(1):45.50).

It is now up to medical and intercalated students to spend their own time and energy to learn basic clinical skills before they can consider themselves qualified, instead of relying on medical school curriculums—the new integrated one or otherwise.

Jasmine Pui, junior house officer, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA


studentBMJ 2001;09:443-486 December ISSN 0966-6494

1. Moscrop A. New house officers lack clinical skills. studentBMJ 2001;9:405