Clinical years

A common question that final year students at UM will pose ” What time are you free to take us for classes? ” !

Apart from the ‘classes’, we will see very little of them. Although on paper, these students are attached to the ward, they will come and go as they please. No clear responsibilities are delegated as no one in the ward can tell if they will be around or not. Their attendance in the wards are not reliable.

Perhaps it is the fault of the co-curriculum itself. The design remains much to be desired. I feel the emphasis on the final professional examination is too strong. Therefore, important clinical work has little significance to these students. The artificial environment which these students incubate in has resulted in many succumbing to stresses during the early years of their careers. I feel the clinical postings should be made a pass or fail event, in which the mentor physician will grade these students based on their clinical performance, failing which they will not go through their relevant postings.

The students themselves ought to show more enthusiasm in learning. Often times you can see that many of them stray away when in a tutorial and hardly make a sound despite being prompted to do so. What goes on in that mind remains a mystery.

These students should be attached to a team of doctors where their responsibilities as a junior trainee doctor should be clearly outlined. In this way, the team of doctors will be well aware of them and can then mentor them appropriately and if needed, ‘classes’ can be arranged in between. The students can then learn about teamwork and will get a better idea of the working conditions that they will have to face in the near future.

Spoon feeding for the exams alone should never ever define the clinical years of medical school. Unfortunately, as of now, it has.