Bedside teaching at the Cinderella status. Options for promotion.

Abstract

Recently, there are increasing published reports that there is a decline in bedside skills of medical students and young doctors. The decline is thought to be due to decline in bedside teaching in medical schools. The aim of this paper is to study the reasons of decline in bedside teaching, and to suggest some remedies for this decline. This study discusses reasons of decline in clinical teaching itemized under 4 subheadings: teaching methods and curricular factors, teachers' factors, students' factors, and patients' factors. We suggest some strategies to improve the status of bedside teaching, including curricular change to better introduce students to properly approach patients clinically, use of community health settings, and outpatient departments as teaching sites and use of clinical skill centers, simulated patient and multimedia programs to enhance clinical skills of students. The situation of bedside teaching is somewhat inadequate, but in adopting innovative solutions, there are hopes for betterment.