“Hugging trees”: its role in medical education
An emphasis on ethics is crucial in medical training, explains Alastair Campbell
- By: Alastair V Campbell
As medical students look to their future practice, they must wonder how many more demands will be placed on them. Scientific knowledge, especially in genetics, is expanding at an exponential rate, leading to a total change in diagnosis and treatment options. At the same time, what a Bristol student recently described as “tree hugging,” seems to be on the increase. Future doctors are now to be not only knowledgeable and competent, but ace communicators too … and really nice people. We need only add the exhortation of the Prince of Wales in his recent Reith lecture to be suspicious of science and listen to ancient harmonies, to leave us wondering whether the 20th century style of medical education is bound to fail to produce the doctors wanted by the patients of the 21st century.
Those of us who teach ethics in medical schools could be seen as yet another source