Many thanks to Paul Masters for drawing my attention to
the paper by Trevor Gray and Victoria Khromova. Doubly so
in that I was able to access the paper and the
accompanying editorial from Danielle Freedman directly
from the net but unable to do so via my subscription to
the Annals!
I suppose I have a special interest in the work carried
out by Victoria and Trevor in that I am a Chemical
Pathologist at a DGH that takes students from Sheffield
Medical School and with my other hat on as Associate
Director of Teaching at Rotherham have responsibility for
the students that come to us. The paper raises several
issues.
I agree with others that there has been a decline in the
time allocated to basic sciences in the UK curriculum.
However, I do think that an integrated type of curriculum
is a move in the right direction. Please, let us not go
back to the preclinical / clinical divide. I do have a
problem with how all that time over the 5 yrs is spent
though in particular the SSC components required by the
GMC. If some of this SSC time could be used to get the
students up to speed in ‘Investigations’ then I believe it
would be time well spent. Clin Biochem is certainly not
the only area that suffers at the moment. As far as I can
see the students need a lot more of Haematology,
Immunology, Microbiology, Histology, etc in lab based
stuff as well as the Radiology / ECG / Lung Function Tests
etc as well.
Who is teaching the students Clin Biochem? This is an area
in which we have to be proactive and enthusiastic if we
are to move forward. If we aren’t a formal part of the
curriculum then we need to be an informal part! I’m pretty
passionate about this and hence I’m involved with small
group teaching of students in their first 2 years (not
teaching Clinical Biochem though) so that when they do hit
the wards full time many of them know who I am and what I
do. Working at a DGH I have the luxury of smaller numbers
of students at any one time in general medicine / surgery
and hence I get some teaching in on Clinical Biochem to
these group of 20 students at a time relatively early on
in their training. We only do basic U+E, glucose, calcium
and LFT. Nothing more complicated. Same again in the final
year. I back it up with a website -
http://www.clinbiochem.info - so that they can work
through this outside the teaching sessions. I also see
them on the wards when I’m doing TPN and ward Biochem
referrals. For those who are particularly interested I
will take them to see patients to see Clin Biochem in
action – patients with DKA are common and make great
Biochem teaching material!
I’m not sure whether we are going to ‘reclaim’ that time
that we used to have with the students for Pathology
teaching. It’s up to the Docs and Clinical Scientists in
Clin Biochem in the NHS to make contact with the students
and provide teaching that they want (and need).
Disclaimer: My views in no way reflect the fact that I
hadn’t a clue about Clin Biochem as a med student and had
never heard of a Chemical Pathologist until I became an
SHO!
Rob Lord
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:11:50 +0000
Paul Masters <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> According to the link to the ACB from the BBC website:
>
> "The Association for Clinical Biochemistry blamed poor
>teaching of the
> subject at medical schools"
>
> Such teaching would in a large part be delivered by
>members of which
> organisation? Oh, the ACB. Talk about shooting yourself
>in the foot!
>
> To be fair the actual press release points to removal of
>clinical
> biochemistry from the curriculum, rather than poor
>teaching. I suggest the
> wording on the ACB website is changed to reflect this.
>
> Paul
>
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