The New Medical Curriculum: A Restoration of the Status Quo

  • Hamish Maclaren

Abstract


I HAVE TO WARN YOU: this is a piece of adverse criticism, but perhaps not quite in the way that you might expect.

Last June, Res Medica asked me to write an article on the New Medical Curriculum, which has recently been inaugurated in this University. The original idea was that two essays would be written on the subject, one by a Professor of Medicine, and one by a medical undergraduate.1 In fact, so far as I know, the Professor of Medicine declined the offer for the very good reason that he considered that the new curriculum ought to be given a chance before it is evaluated. I, however, having nothing to lose, accepted the commission, because, as a matter of fact, I have a point of view. But of course there are various reasons as to why my overview of the subject must be even more blinkered than that of a Professor of Medicine. When Faculty switched curricula, she (I always think of her as a young girl) also chose that moment to convert me from a pre-clinical to a clinical student. Now there are various reasons why this should confound me as a critic of the New Order, they are wearisome to relate and surely self-evident to the attuned. I want to get round them by stating that this piece of adverse criticism is not really directed specifically against the New Medical Curriculum, which may well turn out to be much better than the old. I don't want to talk about all the current curricular hot potatoes — the extra time devoted to clinical chemistry, the curtailment of time spent on the wards in Phase II, the question of whether Phase III Year 1 should have to compete against Phase III year 2 in the same subjects, and so on. I have been trying to ask myself what I think is really wrong with the way we are taught. I think that there is something wrong, that, as my title implies, the existence of a new curriculum has done nothing to improve the situation, and that, really, the new curriculum represents a series of quite superficial changes in the Faculty's approach to medical teaching, beneath which things are going on exactly as before.

 

How to Cite
Maclaren, H. (1). The New Medical Curriculum: A Restoration of the Status Quo. Res Medica, (2). https://doi.org/10.2218/resmedica.v0i2.923
Section
Comments and Reflections