Five Skills You Need to Become a Doctor

The five skills the course actually tests

The course gives this about 146 hours

Attitude, Ethics and Communication is a module of its own, running 26 hours in first year, 37 in second, 31 in third and 52 in the final phase.

Clinical reasoning, worked on real patients

The module asks you to apply clinical reasoning to the care of patients. Not to recall a list, but to decide what the person in front of you most likely has.

Speaking plainly to people who are frightened

You have to communicate with patients, their families and your colleagues. Families remember how the news was broken long after they forget the diagnosis itself.

Empathy is examined, not simply assumed

The module asks you to apply empathy and other human values to the care of the patient. It sits in the written objectives, so it is something you are assessed on.

Working inside a system, not alone

You are asked to apply the principles of system based care. A patient passes through nurses, labs, wards and records, and the doctor who ignores that chain loses time.

Learning that does not stop at graduation

This module runs the length of the course and carries on through internship. Medicine treats learning as a habit you keep, not a syllabus you close.

Want the wellbeing side of training

Our report on the National Medical Commission task force covers what it found about medical student wellbeing and what the Commission asked colleges to change.