Dean's Update | February 2020
Did you flip some pancakes on Tuesday?
There is often talk of the ‘flipped classroom’ approach to teaching. In some ways, the principles of this are already embedded in a medical course, where so much of the important learning is experienced and practiced rather than ‘taught’.
I’m so grateful to the clinicians who work with you on placement or in the skills lab each day and who keep finding ways to fit sharing those key experiences with you, despite the pressures of greater patient numbers and winter infections.
I’m sometimes asked by enthusiastic clinicians, ‘Why can’t specialty X have more time in the curriculum?’. My reply is that you need some holiday time! There is in fact so much to experience and yet relatively little time to fit it all in.
Indeed, those of you in 5th Year may be looking back over your time here and wondering how it went so fast. Alumni tell me they look back on the friendships and escapades they have had here with fondness, but for many these years, and the key clinical experiences they shared have also been pivotal to shaping their career. They would encourage you to keep squeezing every ounce of clinical opportunity out of each day on placement, whether or not we count your hours spent there. After all, we can teach, but only you can experience.
Professor Hazel Scott MBChB MD FRCP PFHEA
Dean of the School of Medicine