Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Head To Head

Should undergraduate medical students be regulated? Yes

BMJ 2010; 340 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c1677 (Published 05 May 2010) Cite this as: BMJ 2010;340:c1677

Rapid Response:

Inaccuracy and hyperbole

Dacre and Raven make interesting but, in my opinion,invalid points
concerning medical student regulation. Although their paper makes some
interesting points it is hindered by inaccuracy and hyperbole.

The authors state that,"other healthcare
professions do not register students but it has been introduced for
solicitors." This is not the case. Trainee solicitors in England and Wales
are required to register with the Solicitors Regulation Authority when
undertaking a Legal Practice Course. Prior to being accepted for this they
have to take an approved academic course or have an exempting law degree
and have no requirement to be registered with the SRA for this
(http://www.sra.org.uk/students/students.page). The situation with
solicitor training is therefore analogous to that of junior doctors where
they become registered only after they have the have finished their
academic training at university.

Secondly, exactly what is the extent of the problem? The
statistics quoted by Davies (BMJ 2010;340:c1806) kick Dacre and Raven's
concerns into the long grass. In 2005 only 16 out of 5833 of doctors in
their first year of practice were identified as giving,"cause for
concern." Were the GMC to consider going down the path of student
regulation the cost, effort and time expended on this would be of minimal
benefit.

Finally, I read in the same issue the article of James and Yates on
risk factors at medical school for subsequent professional misconduct (BMJ
2010;340:c2040. As such it would appear an easier way to ensure medical
students turn into good doctors is to recruit exclusively privately
educated women and kick out those of them that fail even so much as one
exam in the first two years of medical school; or any of them is ever
drunk, incapable or misses even so much as one lecture. Indeed why not
include reports from primary and secondary schools and exlude anyone from
becoming a medical student who has ever done anything bad ever. This is a
reductio ab absurdam at which the authors may balk, but it is the logical
extension of what the authors suggest.

I sincerely hope Dacre and Raven were writing with their tongues
firmly rammed in their cheeks.

Competing interests:
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

17 May 2010
Roderick Neilson
Consultant Haematologist
Forth Valley NHS Acute Services