The ethics of intimate examinations: teaching tomorrow's doctors

Students need experience

I am a fourth year medical student and have heard about the days when 17 students would line up to examine the vagina of an anaesthetised woman; those days are long gone. Full consent is vital and should be gained wherever possible, or we allow poor practice.

We must be educated, however, and with more and more students this is increasingly difficult. I recently carried out a rectal examination on an anaesthetised man without consent, since the surgeon wanted me to feel his enlarged prostate; I am grateful for this experience and feel I did no harm. In six weeks I have to acquire certain skills, and finding a patient to intimately examine in a hospital saturated with students is hard.

We had to catheterise a model in groups of four owing to too few patients and too many students. If the opportunity arises for me to do an examination at the end of …