Anyone who has taught medical students in recent years will be familiar with the sight of students appearing more interested in the screens of their laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. While they may, of course, be using their devices to take notes, there is always the suspicion that they are in fact sending text messages or […]
Category: Students
Sanna W Khawaja: At a crossroads in medical training
I am in the recruitment stage between interviews and offers. At this moment in time, when I look to August I can see myself as both in training and not in training. I can see myself as employed and as unemployed. Perhaps it is the task of ranking potential future jobs, or the desire to […]
Aditya J Nanavati: Are Indian medical students pessimistic about participating in research?
I recently completed my residency in general surgery. Towards the end of my residency, I was introduced to the world of research and publishing. Far from knowing it all, the more I explore this world, the more I realize that I should have been introduced to it much earlier. I believe I speak for the […]
Samir Dawlatly: Would I make it through medical school these days?
I specialised at being a university student. I didn’t graduate from medical school until I was 30, for a variety of reasons, despite the fact that I first set foot in the hallowed halls at the age of 19. Only one of those years was spent recovering from illness. Aside from giving me the chance […]
Sanna W Khawaja: An NHS full of secret agents
While I enjoy the occasional spy movie, I always find myself irritated at the protagonist, who very often spends the film focused on a mission with little or no knowledge of the “bigger picture.” Quite often he or she knows little about the organisation they work for, and, at times, they even accidentally end up in a […]
Julie Browne: Why do some clinical supervisors become bullies?
The literature on bullying in the medical workplace makes disturbing reading. In the General Medical Council’s 2013 national training survey, 13.2% of respondents said that they had been victims of bullying and harassment in their posts, nearly one in five had seen someone else being bullied or harassed, and over a quarter had experienced “undermining” […]
Yvonne Obura: Female genital cutting—improving doctors’ awareness
Female genital cutting (FGC) or mutilation (FGM) is the removal or injury of the external female genitalia for non-medical purposes. It is estimated that 125 million women and girls worldwide are currently living with the effects of FGC, and a further 30 million girls are at risk of being cut within the next decade. According […]
Vinitha Soundararajan and Alisha Patel: Sustainable Healthcare
Climate change, an ageing and growing global population, and depleting planetary resources are well established issues. There is a call for urgent action, especially in healthcare. The NHS has been scrutinised for being a major contributor to the national carbon footprint. Health services globally need to act more sustainably to maintain the world we live […]
Julie Browne: A delicate power balance—teachers and learners in medical education
By the time I taught my first medical students, I was already an experienced schoolteacher and well used to frank, and occasionally uninhibited, feedback on my performance from my young students. There was Elliot, who, if he wasn’t allowed to run about the classroom, could often be found fast asleep under a desk; Izzy, who […]
Desmond O’Neill: Elective Dreams
With every elective student that joins our unit, I get a vivid flashback of my own electives. No matter how much water has flowed under the bridge since then, something particularly special endures about these less structured educational episodes. Even if undertaken in a local hospital, the elements of summer holiday, change of routine, and […]