1: The BMA conference has heard how medical training in the UK is facing some serious problems. From the Guardian story,
Professor Sir Charles George, the chairman of the BMA's board of medical education said many challenges faced medical education, including a lack of appropriate teacher training, teaching methods and funding shortfalls.
"Teaching, and a success in that, has not had the same recognition as research," Sir Charles said.
Basically, we're trying to train doctors, but there has been a terrible problem attracting good quality academics to medicine because the comparative financial rewards compare very, very unfavourably with medical practise. The BMA have been flagging this up for ages, but it hasn't seemed to have percolated through. Perhaps when we stop being able to cater for HE demand in the subject, it will.
2. The Office of Science and Technology commissioned a report into the impact of UK science in conjunction with Evidence Ltd..
They found that we're second behind the US in terms of citations, producing 9% of the world's scientific papers, but getting 12% of the citations. In the Science & Innovation Investment Framework 2004, the respective figures were quoted as 8.5% of published papers, and 11% of citations, so either British scientists have been writing a lot more papers, or other nations have slackened off.
Says the Guardian:
The Evidence study of research from around the world showed the UK ranked in the top three in eight disciplines - biological (2), clinical (2), environmental (2), humanities (2), maths (3), pre-clinical and health (2), social sciences (2) and business (2).
However, physical sciences are significant by their absence, which has to be a concern. Good to see clinical and health sciences there in light of my first story.
The report is currently erroring when I try to access it. Link will be provided later.
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