BMJ  2004;328:1376 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1376

Letter

Campaign to revitalise academic medicine

Crisis in UK academia affects academic medicine too

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

EDITOR—Academic medicine is in a woeful state.^1-3 But this is only part of the crisis affecting UK academia as a whole. Pumping funds into academic medicine alone^1-4 without tackling fundamental issues would only worsen the situation.

"Top class researchers make excellent teachers, and students benefit from the enhanced quality of the education they receive."⁵ But the assessment of these two core university activities, by the research assessment exercise (RAE) and the Quality Assurance Agency's audit and review processes respectively, is totally separate, generating serious conflict. Carrying such immense funding implications compared with the Quality Assurance Agency's process, the research assessment exercise wins over education every time. That clinical practice is assessed by a third process only increases the tension, so the saying "a successful clinical academic is one who doesn't see patients" becomes a truism and not just a pathetic old joke.

Preparing for the next research assessment . . . [Full text of this article]

-->

Department of Visual Neuroscience, Imperial College, Room 9L02, Charing Cross Campus, London W6 8RP a.fielder@imperial.ac.uk

Department of Paediatrics, Imperial College, London W2 1PG

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

Relevant Articles

Academic medicine: time for reinvention: Wholesale review of research and teaching is required

Lewis G Morrison
BMJ 2004 328: 45. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

BMJ Publishing Group to launch an international campaign to promote academic medicine

Jocalyn Clark and Richard Smith
BMJ 2003 327: 1001-1002. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Resuscitating clinical research in the United Kingdom

John Bell
BMJ 2003 327: 1041-1043. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Improving clinical research

Paul M Stewart
BMJ 2003 327: 999-1000. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Sparrow, J M (2006). British academic ophthalmology in crisis.. Br J Ophthalmol 90: 404-405 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Clinical academic medicine

Somnath Mukhopadhyay
bmj.com, 9 Jun 2004 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more here>> and here>>