Postgraduate medical education and the specialties : with special reference to the problem in London.

  • Great Britain. University Grants Committee.
Date:
1962
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Postgraduate medical education and the specialties : with special reference to the problem in London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/24 (page 15)
    SPECIAL HOSPITALS OUTSIDE LONDON In general, as we have seen, these special hospitals form part of a teaching hospital group, providing homes for the relevant clinical departments of the University and facilities for undergraduate as well as postgraduate education. Their main defect is position. Often they are too remote from the general hospital and from the main University buildings and medical schools to realise the objectives already set out. This is very generally realised. It is to be hoped, and indeed expected, that in the fullness of time they will be rebuilt on a site close enough to allow them to form an integral part of the whole com- plex of the medical school and University. Special Units As we have seen, these were in the main arranged as service units, and they were sited with the needs of an area in mind at hospitals on the periphery of cities or in the country where ground or surplus buildings allowed. They were developed, and will be developed, primarily for patient care. They suffer from many of the disadvantages of the special hospitals already outlined, particularly in their separation from general science and the other aspects of university life. They are also necessarily much smaller in size, and they inevi- tably must tend to use skills developed elsewhere, However, they too have come to play an important part in the education of specialists, largely by pro- viding training posts, and have played their part in the development of their subject. If, as is hoped, postgraduate education is organized on a regional basis, catering not only for trainees but also for general practitioners and indeed all doctors, these special units have an important role to play. On a smaller scale, they provide the kind of expertise that the special hospitals have pioneered. But they have the great opportunity of carrying this to parts remote from the University influence. It seems likely that postgraduate education in the regions will be based on those hospitals which preserve and foster that attitude of curiosity and enquiry which is sometimes called the educational atmosphere. In providing and nurturing this, the special units have an important part to play. Competition is of value in that it prevents self-satisfaction and promotes the urge to excel. The friendly rivalry between the older special hospitals and the newer special units may serve to keep both alert and adventurous. In this report we have not tried to set out those arrangements that we think might be quite ideal for medical education in the specialties in the remote future. Two reasons have dictated this : the first reason is that ideal arrangements are concerned with communities and individuals who, in fact, make them work- or otherwise. The second reason is that the present inevitably has to build upon the past. Ideals that can not be realised are of limited interest.