Teaching Medical Students in Primary and Secondary Care: a Resource Book

If you know little about principles of clinical education and want to know more, or if you want to match some experience to basic theory, then this is a useful book. It declares its aim to be a resource book, and the index and contents allow the reader to dip in and out as needed. It has practical tips and short summary boxes which also act as rapid reminders of key practical and conceptual issues, so can be used for quick reference. However, its format is A4 size, so it has to be a shelf book, more suitable for a practice or hospital library than a jacket pocket. Its chapters cover the core content of any ‘teaching the teachers’ course—how people learn, making the best use of different settings, planning a tutorial, designing a course and so on. It reflects the methods used in ‘modern’ curricula, and is very generic, so can be used by staff from any specialty background. The information is mostly evidence-based, sensible and relevant. Inevitably, a brief introductory text will overgeneralize, and also underrepresent the full range of possibilities, as medical education is rapidly altering and new models are appearing of how to make the best use of clinical settings. For instance, there are far more examples of how general practice and community settings are now used for clinical learning than are suggested by this text. Similarly, the box on change management understates the difficulties of securing curricular innovations. The communication skills teaching implies a need for a ‘suite’ of facilities, which are valuable but not essential to such learning, and could risk discouraging those without physical kit from attempting to teach these. Nevertheless, the text is up to date with its comprehensive summary of the role of patients in teaching and learning, and strong in its summary of the cognitive development of new knowledge and skills, making an excellent argument for why interactive methods are essential for most learning. The diagrams supplement the text effectively through some rather cynical cartoons, giving a voice to negative reactions to learning, tend to undermine the ‘can do’ tone of the text. Its market is probably the ‘novice’ educator and the full-time clinician who is occasionally called on to teach. There are competitors, but if you do not have a book of this kind and want a quick guide then I highly recommend it.