WHAT SHALL WE TEACH UNDERGRADUATES

The opinions of 600 randomly selected doctors on what should be taught to undergraduates in clinical years were analysed. The respondents gave a high priority to general medicine, paediatrics, general surgery, casualty, and gynaecology, but a low priority to forensic medicine, plastic surgery, radiotherapy, anaesthetics, radiology, and rehabilitation medicine. Doctors thought that these should be taught to postgraduates. The two major groupings of doctors—general practitioners and consultants—gave essentially the same priorities. Undergraduate curricula cannot include all major specialties, so the results of this analysis may provide a useful basis for selecting the most suitable subjects. Criteria for including other specialties might be the ability and enthusiasm of the teachers and well-thoughtout and academically sound teaching programmes. © 1979, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.