Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Learning In Practice

Reform of undergraduate medical teaching in the United Kingdom: a triumph of evangelism over common sense

BMJ 2004; 329 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.329.7457.92 (Published 08 July 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:92

Rapid Response:

In support of better teachers

Dear Sir,

The proficiency of future doctors will probably rely more heavily in
the quality of the teachers available at our universities than on the
methods being used to transmit the information. 'Inspirational teachers'
are no more readily available in 'traditional' teaching than in Problem
Based Learning (PBL). Indeed, the proportion of people dosing off in a
lecture theatre (an equally 'near-Brownian' waste of time and energy as a
poorly directed PBL) is often positively correlated to the degree of
expertise of the lecturer. I ignore the amount of training given to
lecturers/facilitators nowadays for effectively communicating ideas to
students, but given the number of inspirational teachers I've encountered
in my training it is probably nowhere near enough. The information
retained after a lecture or a PBL does not depend so much on the nature of
the dynamic itself, but on the quality of the presentator.

As for the 'dumbing down' of the curriculum and the resulting
production of incompetent doctors, well, the knowledge base required to
become a good practitioner in the 'information age' is more readily
available than ever before. Poor medical practice will be more likely due
to a lack of curiosity, motivation, and independent learning skills on
part of the doctor than from the absence of "facts" in the curriculum of
his/her medical school many years ago.

Competing interests:
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

10 July 2004
Jorge Zimbron
Medical Student
Guy's King's and St. Thomas' School of Medicine