Introduction

Medicine, dentistry and veterinary science are three traditional but rapidly changing professions. Like other professions they are experiencing an everincreasing expansion in their knowledge base and their training is situated within a higher education sector that has undergone radical changes in recent decades. Although medical, dental and veterinary (MDV) education spans a significant breadth, as suggested by the formation in 1999 of the Learning and Teaching Subject Network, which placed these three areas in a single Subject Centre, there is considerable overlap in the particular features of these fields. For example, the shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred approaches in higher education has additionally had to accommodate another dimension in MDV education, namely patient-centred approaches. The change in public trust of the sciences and the professions in general is perhaps particularly manifest in these areas and today’s MDV students can no longer expect the ‘trust me I’m a doctor’ approach to patient care to be sufficient or acceptable. Today’s patients have more information available to them, are more aware of their rights and are more prepared to challenge those in whose care they might be.