Volume 199 - Issue 6
Attitudes of a private hospital community to medical student teaching
Authors: Geoffrey L Metz, John C Catford and Alan Kinkade
Med J Aust 2013; 199 (6): 396. || doi: 10.5694/mja13.10869
Published online: 16 September 2013
Published online: 16 September 2013
To the Editor: As reported by patients and staff at the Sydney Adventist Hospital (SAH),1 we too at Epworth HealthCare in Melbourne have found overwhelming acceptance of medical student participation in the care of our patients. As Victoria’s largest not-for-profit health care group, we have been training medical undergraduate students from both Monash University and the University of Melbourne for the last 7 years at our ...
To the Editor: As reported by patients and staff at the Sydney Adventist Hospital (SAH),1 we too at Epworth HealthCare in Melbourne have found overwhelming acceptance of medical student participation in the care of our patients. As Victoria’s largest not-for-profit health care group, we have been training medical undergraduate students from both Monash University and the University of Melbourne for the last 7 years at our three major hospitals (Epworth Richmond, Epworth Eastern and Epworth Freemasons).
Student evaluations, which we conduct at the end of each term, have also repeatedly shown that their experience at Epworth HealthCare has been as educational, interesting and enjoyable — and often more so — than at any of their public hospital rotations. There are three main reasons for this: 1) the casemix of general medical and general surgical as well as specialty patients is broader and more typical of cases in the community when compared with traditional tertiary teaching hospitals, 2) students are often taught by more senior and more experienced consultants and 3) there is a much lower student-to-patient ratio, allowing for greater opportunities to learn from patients, compared with the public system.
The Commonwealth Government’s Medical Specialist Training Taskforce observed that, while many rare conditions requiring specialty care can only be seen by students in tertiary public hospitals, increasingly, more common cases requiring general medical and general surgical care are only seen in the private hospital sector.
While we respect and acknowledge the central role of the tertiary teaching hospitals in the education and training of Australia’s students and doctors over the last century, we believe we are entering a new phase of medical education where clinical experience in both the public and private hospital systems will be necessary to develop a well rounded and broadly experienced medical workforce.
We believe that the development of academic health centres in the private sector that integrate research and education with clinical excellence will raise the standard of care and practice. This represents a win–win situation for patients, students and staff across Australia. Interestingly, in the United States, most of the world-renowned academic health centres are private not-for-profit organisations.
Competing interests
No relevant disclosures.
References
- Phillips S, Klein LA. Attitudes of a private hospital community to medical student teaching [letter]. Med J Aust 2013; 198: 532-533. 0_DEDEFGBE