More students and less patients: the squeeze on medical teaching resources

We urgently need to expand clinical teaching into the private sector

In clinical school common rooms around the country, a common refrain of frustrated medical students is “ There aren’t any patients in the wards we can see!” In this issue of the Journal, Olson and colleagues (page 461) report an investigation of hospital inpatients’ accessibility to medical students that strongly suggests that our students’ complaints are real.1