The need for reform of the medical examination system / by T. Pridgin Teale.

  • Teale, T. Pridgin (Thomas Pridgin), 1831-1923.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The need for reform of the medical examination system / by T. Pridgin Teale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    14/22 (page 12)
    part exclude complicated operations not of sudden urgency, such as ■ovariotomy, excisions of joints, plastic operations, lithotomy, lithotrity” (vol. XIX., Visitation Report). Let me conclude this part of my speech with another sentence from Professor Humphry : “ Every question put must be regarded as a drop in the educational current of the future ; and examiners must recognise that they are not simply judges of the students who come before them, but that they are in no less degree directors of, and so responsible for, the teaching of those who will follow” (Hunterian Oration). 3.—Interference with Clinical Work and Practical Training. My third point is interference with clinical work and practical training. So far we have been dealing chiefly with facts and statistics. The next point does not admit of statistical proof, and is one of testimony and inference. It is an opinion several times expressed to me by clinical teachers, and confirmed by young’ men who have recently completed their medical education, that advanced industrious students are unable to devote sufficient time to work in the wards and to self- training, because they dare not tear themselves away from the drudgery of book-work, dreading failure in the examination. As a result of this deficiency iu clinical training and the want of a larger element in self-education, I frequently hear bitter complaints from medical men in country places, who find their newly-fledged assistants woefully deficient in their fitness for and adaptability to practice. They can talk about bacteriology and recondite neurolog3r, but they have not the capacity for simple observation of the cases that come before them, nor the power of turning to profitable use the knowledge they have acquired during their career as students. Testimony such as this may not be, is not, exact evidence; but as a contribution to the evidence, though a small one, I give it for what it is worth. On this point let me quote a hospital surgeon, Mr. Tobin, of Dublin. In his introductory address at the opening of the sessions 1805-96, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, he says : “ It thus appears that there are two stages iu the curriculum—a preliminary scientific stage, and a stage devoted directly to medical problems. It is with this second stage that I, as a hospital teacher, am most, concerned, and the question that I ask you to consider with me