ABSTRACT
This is not the place for a treatise on the theory of education, nor even its practice. Virtually all doctors will be called upon from time to time to teach, yet few receive any training how to do it. The formality of the setting will vary from the house officer demonstrating a skill such as venepuncture to a few students, to a GP giving a talk to a First Aid class, to a professor giving a Royal College lecture. In theory at least, the formal lecture to students is dead, and all teaching should be ‘interactive’. The other dinosaur which stubbornly refuses to become extinct is the mixed business plus teaching ward round-there is general agreement that the two activities cannot be satisfactorily combined.
