Univeristy Says No
Yesterday we began a series of 'safe prescribing' lectures, there is the potential for a station in our OSCE on prescribing but I think these lectures are more aimed towards making us safer doctors. It is a shame that these lectures are starting 3 weeks before finals, it would have been much more useful to have them regularly throughout the year or even the whole 5 years. It was fairly basic stuff and it would have been better had there been slightly more pharmacology involved.
That said, the lectures were quite useful but it was the other things I learnt which I found most interesting. We asked why these sessions had been left so late, after all we've better things to be concentrating on at the moment. The answer was most enlightening.
It seems that they have had some trouble putting on these sessions, and others like them. In fact, we learnt that in previous years, one of the surgeons had offered teaching sessions throughout the year on things he thought were lacking in our course, suturing for example. Unfortunately for the students, the university had contacted the surgeon in question and ordered him to stop giving the sessions as it would be unfair on students at other hospitals. (For those of you who don't know, the 3 clinical years of our course are spent at 1 of 4 teaching hospitals in the region). Let me get this straight, the university had told staff at this hospital, not to teach us topics where there might be gaps in our knowledge? I was flabbergast, I really hope I've misunderstood something here because as far as I can see the university are actively withdrawing learning opportunities! Perhaps they're right, maybe it isn't fair on students at other hospitals, but that is the university's problem, it shouldn't prevent people from offering to teach! The university should be doing everything it can to ensure everybody gets these opportunities, not preventing them! It must be virtually impossible to prevent this kind of teaching at all 4 hospitals, so I'm sure somewhere some students are going to be getting something that other students are missing out on.
Why don't they just lock us all in a room for 5 years with some textbooks? God forbid we might actually be taught something!
What sort of institution is this and what sort of doctors is it trying to produce?
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