From Dr Michael A. Simpson Sir: John Rowan Wilson (December
23, 1972) really should brush up his knowledge of medical education, before tilting so ostentatiously at his self-constructed educational windmills.
He discusses the very important matter of the place of medical ethics in the training of doctors, but he makes some very false basic assumptions. In the first place, he assumes that the existing system does provide adequate opportunities for meeting and discussing ethical and humanitarian problems, and for formulating individual attitudes and solutions to such problems. This is simply untrue, as a proper study of the present system will reveal, and as thousands of medical and nursing students can testify.
But more seriously, Dr Wilson takes a fashionably snide but reactionary attitude to modern educational technology. By gratuitously accusing "modern educational experts" of attitudes and beliefs that are held by none who could claim such a title, he unfairly maligns those who are working to improve our present haphazard system of training. The system of bedside teaching, he says, "is ridiculed by modern educational experts" — not one reputable expert has done so, and on the contrary, it is just such experts who have provided cogent studies extolling the virtues of such teaching and have helped us to increase its effectiveness.
Dr Wilson also calls on us to rob "the educationists of some of their mechanical toys " so as to give the importance to the individual, and rails against his false personal fantasies of modern educational techniques. Audiovisual aids — so long as they are aids, and not audio-visual substitutes, may enhance learning. The full panoply of educational aids and facilities which seen so to menace Dr Wilson are of inestimable value when properly used; only the very naive will judge their value by their occasional abuse.
Unlike Dr Wilson and the views he appears to represent, there are a growing number of individuals who take medical education, as well as the importance Of the individual, with the seriousness they deserve. We would prefer to develop a more effective, humane, enjoyable and flexible system of education, properly aware of and responsive to individual and societ al needs. We do not believe that the existing system, almost entirely untested and unproven, and derived by hunch, guess and
assumption, represents the epitome of human development. And, des, pite such ill-informed sneers as ,Dr Wilson's article contains, we will
• continue trying to improve the situation.
Michael A. Simpson York Clinic, Guy's Hospital, London SE!
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