Students get more time on wards

Published on Wednesday 2 September 2009 22:02

MEDICAL students are to be lured out of lecture theatres and into hospitals, as part of new guidance to improve medical training, it emerged yesterday.

The General Medical Council (GMC) said the updated guidance would mean that such placements were standardised across UK medical schools.

The new version of Tomorrow's Doctors will require medical schools and the NHS to organise "student assistantships" – placements of between six and eight weeks where they follow the work of doctors to understand basic tasks such as filling in prescriptions or ordering blood samples.

At the moment, there is variation in the kind of practical exposure students are given in different areas of the UK.

Jim McKillop, Professor of Medicine at Glasgow University and chairman of the GMC's undergraduate board, said: "Being a junior doctor now is much more intense than it used to be when I was a junior doctor, when there were large numbers of patients on wards convalescing. Now people who are in hospital tend to be acutely ill.

"A junior doctor now has many more procedures they are expected to perform.

"We are recognising that the complexity of practice is increasing."

The new guidance also puts a emphasis on students learning "hard science", such as anatomy and genetics, as well as practical skills.

Students will also have to prove they have mastered a range of procedures, such as administering local anaesthetic, before they graduate.