As one of the six medical students who participated in the TV
programme 'Thoroughly Modern Medic', I felt obliged to reply, as there are
a few comments I would like to make with regards to the topic of teaching
by humiliation.
I took part in this exercise, as I wanted to experience the change in
medical practice and use it positively so that when I qualify I could gain
a better insight into medicine, its history and its evolution throughout
the years.
With regards to the medical advancement, I would agree that medicine
has evolved to become more efficient and undoubtedly a superior practice
to what it was in the 1950's.
However, I would have to disagree the support Dr Belsy has for
‘teaching by humiliation'.
The reason as to why I think Dr Belsy would have felt some of us improved
as the programme progressed were largely due to the fact there were two
contrasting settings throughout the filming. During filming, we were all
performing as we would have on the wards, but off-screen we were one ‘big
happy family’.
We cannot look at the experience of the participants to determine
whether teaching by humiliation is the way forward as the setting was
totally different to what one would expect to find on the hospital wards
today.
I have experienced strict consultants who do teach by humiliation.
However, in this day and age we need the consultants to establish a
rapport with their students, just as we are taught in medical training to
establish rapport with our patients.
Awais Bokhari (Final Year Medical Student at: Guy’s King’s and St
Thomas’ Hospital)
Rapid Response:
Harassment or Mollycoddling?
As one of the six medical students who participated in the TV
programme 'Thoroughly Modern Medic', I felt obliged to reply, as there are
a few comments I would like to make with regards to the topic of teaching
by humiliation.
I took part in this exercise, as I wanted to experience the change in
medical practice and use it positively so that when I qualify I could gain
a better insight into medicine, its history and its evolution throughout
the years.
With regards to the medical advancement, I would agree that medicine
has evolved to become more efficient and undoubtedly a superior practice
to what it was in the 1950's.
However, I would have to disagree the support Dr Belsy has for
‘teaching by humiliation'.
The reason as to why I think Dr Belsy would have felt some of us improved
as the programme progressed were largely due to the fact there were two
contrasting settings throughout the filming. During filming, we were all
performing as we would have on the wards, but off-screen we were one ‘big
happy family’.
We cannot look at the experience of the participants to determine
whether teaching by humiliation is the way forward as the setting was
totally different to what one would expect to find on the hospital wards
today.
I have experienced strict consultants who do teach by humiliation.
However, in this day and age we need the consultants to establish a
rapport with their students, just as we are taught in medical training to
establish rapport with our patients.
Awais Bokhari (Final Year Medical Student at: Guy’s King’s and St
Thomas’ Hospital)
awais.bokhari@kcl.ac.uk
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests