Report on the examinations, 1881-2, of the medical and surgical corporations of the United Kingdom by the visitors appointed by the General Medical Council.

  • General Medical Council.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the examinations, 1881-2, of the medical and surgical corporations of the United Kingdom by the visitors appointed by the General Medical Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    examination. One case only being allowed to each candidate, too much might depend upon the candidate having had previous opportunities of seeing the particular kind of case allotted to him; and there is, further, the accident of his not being in a state of mind to form a calm and impartial judgment upon it. Moreover, a good man, though well instructed in general, may fail, when under examination, to comprehend the bearings of a particular case, or may have his judgment upon it warped at the outset by some purely conventional and venial error ; whereas an inferior man, who has a certain amount of cleverness in expressing himself on paper, may give a right diagnosis, and may accumulate, partly from observation and partly from book knowledge, a sufficient amount of details to give it a plausible support, although possessing little real skill in the work allotted to him. These considerations tend to show that a wrong diagnosis may sometimes speak better for a candidate than a right one ; or, at all events, that it is not so much the accuracy of the diagnosis, as the mode in which it is arrived at, that ought to influence the examiner in estimating the position of the candidate. The Dublin examination is here at all points superior to the K. & Q. Coll. London one. The candidate is asked to examine the case for ^''lys.,Ireland, himself, as in London, and he is ultimately expected to write upon it a report, a schedule being handed to him at the beginning of his examination for the purpose of confining his remarks within the limits required. But while this written report is, as in London, an essential part of the examination, it is by no means upon the document only that the examiner ultimately founds his judgment. At any period between the personal investigation of the case by the candidate, and the written report upon it, or even after the report is finished, the examiner may, and does, intervene, going to the bedside and asking the candi- date what he has discovered, how he is proceeding, what are his reasons for such and such a statement; or, finally, asking him to demonstrate, by actual manipulation, conducted in presence of the examiner, the facts in detail. It is obvious that the securities here against incompetency are almost indefinitely multiplied, as compared with a judgment founded merely on a written report by the candidate. Besides, as regards its reflex influence on the methods of instruction, the Dublin clinical ex- amination, with its viva voce conference between the examiner and
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