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Medical schools' gap between research and clinical practice criticised

General Research

Medical research is falling behind the burden of disease because medical education is not effectively bridging the gap between research and clinical practice. That's the stark appraisal of three Oxford-based researchers, including Oxford University’s head of medical sciences.

In an article for journal Science Translational Medicine, Dr Alastair Buchan and colleagues Gabriele DeLuca and Pavel Ovseiko call for a new approach to training what are called clinician-scientists, doctors educated both as medical practitioners and researchers.

They say that the current approach to medical training means that the development of clinical skills and knowledge is increasingly separated from education in research skills and knowledge. Training in the two areas is not only separated by teaching timetables that see the two areas as firmly discrete and disconnected but by the increasing move of research from hospitals to specialist centres.

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