A scheme of medical tuition / by E.A. Parkes.

  • Edmund Alexander Parkes
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A scheme of medical tuition / by E.A. Parkes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    III. THE FOURTH YEAR. In the scheme of medical tuition which I am proposing, the whole of the third year is given up to medicine and surgery, and the work of the student is concentrated on these two subjects. There should be nothing to divert his attention, and for the pur¬ pose of giving the greatest amount of time to practical work, the formal lectures are reduced to two daily. I look upon this arrange¬ ment and on the system of hospital training by the most exact methods in the wards, as the most important part of the plan. I presume the student would enter on the fourth year fully instructed in the best mode of examining patients, able to make a good diagnosis, and possessed of the methods of treatment most approved by his teachers. Now will be the time to give him the benefit of the immense field of the out-patients. The benefit will not be only his, but will extend to the patients. Few will affirm that our present out-patient system is satisfactory; at any rate with medical patients. At many hospitals the work is overwhelm¬ ing, and has to be despatched with a celerity that is certainly unbecoming, if not dangerous. The patients, too, are often kept waiting for very long periods, and in many cases must suffer serious discomfort, if not injury. The whole system needs remodelling, and the means of doing so are ready to our hand. The fourth-year’s men should be divided into classes, and assigned to each out-patient physician. On them should fall the task of receiving and examining the patients, while the physician’s duty should be merely one of reference and superintendence. Supposing, for example, an out-patient goes to the hospital for the first time ; a roster will give the student’s name under whose care he is to be, and who at once would examine him, and report his opinion and the treatment he proposes to the physician. That patient should be then under the charge of the student, who must be answerable for him, and who should, if necessary, attend him at his own house. Each student would thus gradually get twenty to thirtv patients, who would be under his particular care. After his ward-training he could surely be trusted, and, besides, he has