Remarks by the Medical and Surgical Corporations of the United Kingdom on the reports of the Visitors of Examinations 1881-2.

Date:
[1882?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks by the Medical and Surgical Corporations of the United Kingdom on the reports of the Visitors of Examinations 1881-2. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    K. Q. Coll, candidates, although recently the King’s Professor of Midwifery Phys. Ieel. Examiner, and at present the King’s Professors of Institutes of Medicine and of Materia Medica are Examiners. 2. Regarding the Clinical Examination, the Visitors refer to the examination of the 6th of July, 1881, at the Whitworth Hospital, and remark upon the absence of the Physicians whose patients were the subjects of the examination. ‘ The absence of the Physicians on this occasion was exceptional, as usually one or more of the Hospital Physicians meet the Examiners, and point out the particular cases most suitable for examination, and assist the Examiners in determining the nature of the cases. The Visitors are in error if they think that there is usually “ no intercommunication ” between the Examiners as to the nature of the cases. The custom is to have such intercom- munication, and arrange that the same candidate shall be ex- amined on different forms of disease by each Examiner. Generally, a rough classification of the diseases is made ; one Examiner dealing with acute, the other with chronic, diseases. The College wish to point out that, in their opinion, it would be impracticable and not advisable to adopt the suggested plan of having as one at least of the Examiners in Clinical Medicine the Physician responsible for the treatment of the cases employed in the examination {see page 15). As the Court of Examiners of the College is at present constituted, two of the Censors are appointed to examine in Clinical Medicine for at least one year ; so that, if the suggestion of the Visitoi’s were carried out, the candidates would be brought on every occasion to one or other of the hospitals to which the Examiners happened to be Physicians, and not, as at present, to an hospital selected by ballot out of a list of nine Clinical Hospitals in Dublin. The result would be that the candidates, knowing beforehand that they would be examined at one or other of the hospitals, would visit those hospitals before the examination, in order to make up the cases. The Visitors apparently recognised this difficulty, for they further suggested that if it were not feasible in all cases to select as Examiners the Physicians responsible for the treatment they should at least be associated with the Examiners as Assessors. But to this plan, also, there are grave objections. In the first ' place, the College would experience much difficulty in securing the services of independent Hospital Physicians as Assessors,