ABSTRACT
THE WORKPLACE HAS LONG BEEN A SIGNIFICANT SITE FOR MEDICAL learning at all stages of education and training. Calls for ‘early patient contact’ (GMC, 1993) have led to a gradual demise of the traditional preclinical–clinical divide in undergraduate years, with students spending time in clinical workplaces from year one. Despite the significant investment of resource in undergraduate ‘attachments’ of this nature, there are increasing concerns about new graduates’ preparedness for professional practice and the lack of opportunities for ‘hands on’ work before graduation (Illing et al., 2008). Indeed, the relaunch of Tomorrow’s Doctors (GMC, 2009) has been accompanied with calls to reinstate the traditions of old, arguing that clinical attachments, shadowing and new ‘student assistantships’ should have greater prominence (GMC, 2009). These calls arise alongside concerns about the demise of medical apprenticeship (Dornan, 2005), the loss of the clinical ‘firm’, the impact of UK National Health Service reform on medical training and a shift toward competency-based models in postgraduate years (Tooke, 2007). There has perhaps never been a better time to research workplace-based learning in medicine; the challenge is perhaps to identify the types of conceptual and theoretical tools that best enable us to do this.
