Trainee doctors `being denied vital experience'

Cancelled operations are not only depriving patients of vital surgery, but are damaging the education of next generation of doctors, medical students claimed yesterday.

Some students are learning surgery out of text-books instead of from patients and are qualifying without ever having seen a tonsillectomy, hysterectomy or hip-replacement operation, Kate Adams, the chair of the British Medical Association's medical students committee, said.

Ms Adams, a fourth-year student at St Bartholomew's and the Royal London Hospital Medical Schools, said: "Students are looking at textbooks instead of seeing patients. You never remember things from textbooks as well as you do from practical experience. The cornerstone of our training is learning from patients and we really value what they contribute to our education. This training is in jeopardy because of cuts. We are worried about what the long-term consequences will be, and the implications for patients." She predicted that some junior doctors in casualty departments would be faced with cases, which they had never seen before, and that lack of knowledge could delay diagnosis, and increase misdiagnosis, in general practice. Annabel Ferriman