ABSTRACT
Medical education in the UK has perhaps never been under such close scrutiny as in recent years. The Bristol Royal Infirmary inquiry (Department of Health, 2001) and the Shipman Inquiry (2005), among others, have resulted in a very close focus on what it means to be a doctor in the twenty-first century and significantly, on the ways in which we train doctors of the future and safeguard their practice. Such events may have put medical education in the public eye recently, but in fact the past decade has been characterised by rapid and significant reform of healthcare (see Clarke, Gewirtz and McLaughlin, 2000) and in the ways in which medical students and junior doctors are prepared for their future roles.
