BMJ  2004;329:799-800 (2 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7469.799-c

Letter

Reform of undergraduate medical teaching in the United Kingdom

Evangelism triumphs over common sense for ophthalmology

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

EDITOR—In the same issue as Williams and Lau describe the reform of undergraduate medical teaching as a triumph of evangelism over common sense,¹ on page 80, the photographs showing narrowed and normal retinal arteriolar diameter are the wrong way round.² Five days later on bmj.com no one else seems to have noticed [though a correction was published a month later³].

This is a sad reflection on the inability of non-specialist medical practitioners to distinguish between a retinal arteriole and a retinal venule any more, the result of the lack of undergraduate medical training in ophthalmology. Another triumph of evangelism.

Claremont Wing, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4LP m.p.clarke@ncl.ac.uk

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Competing interests: None declared.

1. Williams G, Lau A. Reform of undergraduate medical teaching in the United Kingdom: a triumph of evangelism over common sense. BMJ 2004;329: 92-4. (10 July.)[Free Full Text]
2. Wong TY, Shankar A, Klein R, Klein BE, Hubbard LD. Prospective cohort study of retinal vessel diameters and risk of hypertension. BMJ 2004;329: 79-82. (10 July.)[Abstract/Free Full Text]
3. Correction. Prospective cohort study of retinal vessel diameters and risk of hypertension. BMJ 2004;329: 384. (14 August.)[Free Full Text]

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