I think there is something like that in medical schools, but I am not sure. My personal opinion is that until healers will understand what patients feel and become patients themselves, they can not be true healers. Cheers!

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See the Whole Picture of Health…
http://www.WellnessAid.com

My issue was with this particular phrase of the author’s rhetoric “one…man I took care of at the VA hospital who really understood what a teaching hospital is all about”. I ask you this: is a teaching hospital REALLY all about teaching new doctors? If you answered “yes”, then I would say that you forgot something: the care of the patients. I would make the dramatic (and from what I gather from the nastiness I have encountered, offensive) claim that ALL hospitals are REALLY about caring for sick/injured people. Everything else is secondary. Important, indeed, but secondary nonetheless.
The author wraps up her article with this statement: “rare [is the] individual who can, in their own time of illness, find the energy (and bravery) to be a teacher as well as a patient.” How true! This is indeed rare and it is a reality of dealing with people who are sick and afraid. When training our new Doctors, shouldn’t we be preparing them for this reality rather than hoping that the patients themselves will have some mass attitude adjustment? I would like to see that idea embraced and be so pervasive that a blog entry like this one is simply pointing out the obvious.

One last thing – @marylin – your bedside manner is lacking. I understand your anger, but I hope you reserve that for anonymous internet postings.

Funny thing is, all you trashing Justin, my son has views which tend to agree with Justin, not you. He is at times rather upset at the view that patients exist only to help doctors or students learn.

He has to do things the first time, and with real live humans. But, he never forgets it’s all about the patient, not his learning. If the needs of the patient contradict his learning for any reason, he believes he should wait until a more appropriate patient is available.

He was especially touched at his training pelvic. In the past, students did their first pelvics on women who were, frankly, unconscious for other reasons. It was finally realized this is unethical. (Yeah, duh!) His school went the new route, which is to pay volunteers. I think they were told the women got like $250 for each student, and were trained to tell the student if anything hurt or was uncomfortable.

He said his volunteer looked as if she were ashamed she had to do this for money. It is usually said the women are paid prostitutes, and he did not think his volunteer was, but a woman who needed money and felt this was a relatively good thing, unlike prostituting herself sexually. But, she still seemed a bit ashamed or embarrassed by it. He both apologized for his need, and thanked her when they were done.

Good for you, Justin. And, boo hiss for those who called him names.

Play nicely with Justiin,he might have had a really bad experience.

fyi… over the past 5 years, all teaching hospitals (those that have residents and medical students) are REQUIRED to have patients grade those in the learning process.

so your idea of the ideal system is that the current generation of doctors will be the last, as it is not in the patient’s best interest for doctors to learn new skills?

doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. unfortunately there are quite a few idiots like you who make training junior doctors difficult by refusing to let them learn new techniques. in my view you shouldn’t get the choice.