The elephant in the room: Modernising Medical Careers – an educational critique

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Abstract
Summary: 1. Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) training in the UK has been introduced with haste. The pilot schemes were concerned merely with feasibility. 2. MMC has been subject to much criticism of its implementation and administration but not its educational foundation. 3. There is no educational evidence that the system will be any better, on the contrary, there is much writing lately that describes evidence that would be critical of the programme. This is reviewed. 4. Such evidence shows that to fashion a truncated programme around a ‘competency’ paradigm is flawed. There are other arguments. 5. To interfere this way with such an important issue as specialist expertise ostensibly on the grounds of workforce planning is questionable. ‘There’s an elephant in the room: but everyone’s trying to ignore it’ English idiom ‘[ The professional is ]…”someone with a wide range of interventions available and who can move cleanly and elegantly amongst them.”“Cleanly and elegantly”; I like that: we don’t see the joins or hear the machinery creaking…The least we owe [the trainee] is to keep [the] possibility of [this] delight and elegance alive and to defend the time and space to discover them’. Roger Neighbour, reflecting on John Heron (The Inner Consultation)