ABSTRACT
From patient-centred medicine to student-centred learning is a short step, and it is the purpose of this chapter to explore the similarities. If doctors don’t understand the similarities between the two, and the fact therefore that we use role play, in a number of respects, to educate doctors to talk like teachers, then we have failed to grasp an important point. Doctors deal in facts – or rather, a lot of doctors deal in a lot of facts a lot of the time. A great deal of medical training is inevitably concerned with reducing ambiguity, with getting to the kernel of truth at the heart of the baffling evidence. Through formal or informal training or supervision of students, junior staff and other professionals, all doctors are involved in teaching to some extent. The presumption that only the proper understanding of a clinical discipline is enough to fulfil a doctor’s educational obligation is no longer tenable.
