Abstract

This edition’s paper on ‘How doctors spend their time on an AMU’ defines ‘training’ as time spent on senior ward rounds. But the idea that senior ward rounds are training and the rest of work is not is a huge assumption that must be challenged. This article explores some false ideas about postgraduate medical education; why teaching and learning activities needs to be made more explicit, and why we need to stop talking about ‘training’ and start talking about learning. The goal of professional education is expertise, not competence. That can only happen through work-based learning, something to which we need to pay much more attention.

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