Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Why medicine and why not?
- 2 Opportunity and reality
- 3 Requirements for entry
- 4 Choosing a medical school
- 5 Application and selection
- 6 Interviews
- 7 Medical school: the early years
- 8 Medical school: the later years
- 9 Doubts
- 10 The new doctor
- 11 Developing your career
- 12 Career opportunities
- 13 Privileges and responsibilities: avoiding the pitfalls
- Postscript
- Appendices
- Index
8 - Medical school: the later years
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Why medicine and why not?
- 2 Opportunity and reality
- 3 Requirements for entry
- 4 Choosing a medical school
- 5 Application and selection
- 6 Interviews
- 7 Medical school: the early years
- 8 Medical school: the later years
- 9 Doubts
- 10 The new doctor
- 11 Developing your career
- 12 Career opportunities
- 13 Privileges and responsibilities: avoiding the pitfalls
- Postscript
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
As the medical student progresses through into their third year and beyond, increasing amounts of time are spent in the various clinical teaching settings and less in the classroom. The white coat is donned, and the shiny new stethoscope is placed ostentatiously in the pocket, usually alongside numerous pocket-sized textbooks, pens, notepads, and sweet wrappers. Most students by now have some experience of listening and talking to patients and of the hospital wards. The sight of the ill patient in a bed does not come as the awful surprise it did to generations of medical students who spent their first 2 years cocooned in the medical school.
The style of teaching changes emphasis, becoming more of an apprenticeship but retaining the academic backup of lectures, seminars, and particularly tutorials. More of the course is taught by clinical staff: consultants, general practitioners (GP), and junior doctors, often in small groups at the bedside, on dedicated teaching rounds or in tutorials, in the operating theatre, in the outpatient clinic, or general practice surgery. Teaching also takes place at clinical meetings or grand rounds and the firm's regular radiology meeting (when the week's X-ray pictures and scans are reviewed and discussed with a radiologist) and histopathology meeting (when the results of tissue biopsies and postmortem examinations are discussed). Some students find the change in the style of teaching frustrating as much time seems to be wasted hanging around waiting for teaching that never seems to happen.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Learning MedicineHow to Become and Remain a Good Doctor, pp. 101 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007