Closing the gap between professional teaching and practice

doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7288.685

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ comment articles:

From

Limit by

Our online table of contents is updated at least twice each day. Read all articles published in the last 7 days.
Keep up to date with cardiology: Access the latest cardiovascular medicine resources from across BMJ Group.
The BMJ iPad app brings you the best of print and online, including live links to the latest news, blogs, video, and podcasts. Get the BMJ iPad app.
OPEN ACCESS: All research articles are freely available online, with no word limit. Find out more about the BMJ's open access policy. Submit your paper.
Countdown to London 2012: BMJ Group's Olympics portal highlights latest Olympics and sports medicine-themed research, comment and learning

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

A policy can help protect students from being asked to behave unethically

Len Doyal (l.doyal@mds.qmw.ac.uk), professor of medical ethics

Department of Human Science and Medical Ethics, St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, London E1 2AD

Papers p 709 Personal view p 743

Learning to be a doctor can be uniquely rewarding. Unlike other undergraduate study, clinical medicine has a practical edge such that students can directly experience the relevance of their academic work through their educational contact with patients. They also have the privilege of experiencing the range of human intellect, emotion, achievement, and failure embodied in the patients from whom they will learn. Finally, their positive interactions with patients reinforce the altruism that brought many of them into medicine. At its best, medical education can make students feel good about themselves and what they are learning, as well as preparing them for good professional practice. But if a gap exists between their clinical teaching and what they know and feel to be morally right the effects can be disastrous.1

Policy on the rights of patients in medical education

For educational activities not part of clinical care:

Patients must understand that medical students are not qualified doctors (and not “young doctors,” “my colleagues,” or “assistants”).
Clinical teachers and students must obtain explicit verbal consent from patients before students take their case histories or physically examine them, making sure they understand the primarily educational purpose of their participation.
Clinical teachers and students should never perform physical examinations or present cases that are potentially embarrassing for primarily educational purposes without the patient's verbal consent—including for the number …