Academic medicine

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7348.1275

BMJ 2002;324:1275 ( 25 May )

Letters

Academic medicine

Academic medicine is still hospital based

Clinical academic recruitment begins in clinical departments

Academy of Medical Sciences responds

Academic medicine is still hospital based

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

EDITOR $---$ Stewart in his editorial on academic medicine displayed a total lack of recognition that academic medicine includesgeneral practice and other disciplines not included in "teachinghospitals."¹ The largest group of consultants in the NHS workin general practice, not anaesthesia, and maybe Stewart wonderedhow many general practice trainees were contemplating an academiccareer.

As someone who started an academic career in 1976 and is about to re-enter the fray, let me offer a different reason why academicmedicine is so unpopular. Academic medicine is still dominatedby the aristocratic hospital minorities such as internal medicineand surgery, which play such a small part in the modern practiceof medicine. Perhaps it is because they have so much time to sparethat they can spend their time administering. To become a professorof medicine or surgery now you have to be young, impossibly specialisedto the point of . . . [Full text of this article]