Integrating medical students into the clinical team

Launer’s article highlights how many doctors feel they must choose between medical education and service provision.1 But many activities that are typically considered to be “service provision” can be highly educational—particularly in the earlier years of training. Referring patients to another specialty, for example, often involves performing a structured clinical assessment and producing a structured handover, providing students with the valuable opportunity to practise history taking, examination, and clinical reasoning.