ABSTRACT
Introduction The education of medical, dental and veterinary (MDV) professionals has changed rapidly in recent years. Influences for change have come from many directions. These include changes in higher education (such as abolition of the student grant in the 1990s) and in higher training (eg, the Caiman Reforms to higher specialist training in medicine). Another factor is the changed attitude of the general public to health professionals and the care they expect. Changed patterns of delivery of care, ‘high tech’ interventions, and solutions that are enormously costly, coupled (arguably) with insufficient resources for healthcare and education, have added to the complexity of the picture. Expansion of numbers of clinicians in at least one of the three areas and the restructuring of grades within these professions (and related ones) are also having an impact. These changes, and many others, are part of the new environment in which those who educate and train, work. The changes have profound implications for the practice of teaching, for assessing and designing curricula, and for learning.
