Changing doctors' behaviour: fine them, or get them to improve their processes?

This week's BMJ describes two unusual experiments and contains a strong message about improving health services that emerges from three separate editorials on totally different subjects.

We are particularly pleased to publish the randomised trial by Elizabeth Murray and others showing that medical students can learn their clinical skills just as well in the community as in hospital (p 920). Educationalists worry that medical education is not taken seriously enough by doctors, and we would like to publish more research on educational initiatives. The problem we …