Just thinking: what we do
I was sat in a meeting recently. We were discussing teaching, amongst other things. And I pencilled out what we in dermatology deliver each year, every year (subtext: I doubted that people realise how much effort and resource we need to teach clinical medicine).
We provide clinical placements for 36 weeks per year, with 12-14 students attached for each two week period, in 18 ‘cohorts’. Over the year we provide just under 400 hours of clinical seminars, in which patients appear, but are there for teaching purposes only, with the students in groups of around ten, and with the teacher having no other responsibility (they are not managing patients). In addition we provide around 1500 hours of clinical experience — timetabled events in which a student attends a session in which they are not the focus of attention. These latter sessions are real: they are timetabled by person and time, start and finish on time, and are rarely cancelled or changed.
Students like what we do, they like the online stuff, too, and the staff are enthusiastic. But this system does not run itself and, in the long term, I fear might not be sustainable, even though the funding is said to be there. It is certainly not optimal, even though our students get a better deal than students at most other UK medical schools. We need to do something else, building on what we do well. Just thinking.