Closing the gap between professional teaching and practice

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7303.47/b

BMJ 2001;323:47 ( 7 July )

Letters

Closing the gap between professional teaching and practice

Applying ethical principles is sometimes difficult for students

Ethical guidance for teaching applies to postgraduate education as well

Applying ethical principles is sometimes difficult for students

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ In raising points regarding the ethics of the provision of clinical education, Doyal suggests a framework to guideboth teachers and students when interacting with patients clinically.¹On numerous occasions I have been placed in uncomfortable positionswhere I have felt conflict between my ethics (for example, beingasked to undertake femoral arterial blood gas analysis on a comatoseelderly patient without any consent having been obtained fromrelatives (I refused)) and my natural desire to acquire clinicalskills.

Students walk this ethical tightrope every day; to refuse to do something or to object one has to tread carefully. It is oftenthe same clinicians who put the student in this difficult positionwho are assessing him or her for the final grade on the clinicalattachment. The move towards continuous assessment rather thana final examination has meant that students are under even greaterpressure to conform . . . [Full text of this article]