BMJ 1995;310:1265-1266 (13 May)

Letters

Anaesthetists are tested under examination conditions

EDITOR,--P F S Prior-Willeard and J David report their finding that skills in advanced life support are little improved since their preliminary study one year ago.1 We agree that there is a fundamental problem of incentive and that postgraduate medical examinations must provide this incentive by including resuscitation skills as a component of practical testing. This has been firmly endorsed by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, which includes a compulsory testing station in its new objective structured clinical examination. Candidates are asked to demonstrate their skills at single rescuer basic life support for about two minutes and are subsequently examined in their ability to recognise rhythms and their theoretical knowledge of advanced life support.

Anaesthetists generally perform resuscitation to a high standard. Despite this, we believe that the inclusion of compulsory testing in the fellowship examination has provided an additional stimulus for trainees to acquire the necessary skills. It remains . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Auditing absence due to sickness
S Khan and T C Aw
BMJ 1995 310: 195. [Extract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ