Bed requirements for undergraduate teaching.

Abstract

In 1709 Hermann Boerhaave was appointed professor of botany and medicine at Leyden and proceeded to make that university the centre of clinical teaching in Europe. He had 12 beds at his disposal. Few modern professors would be content with this modest allocation but it is probably true that if teaching were exclusively conducted by case demonstrations a few beds might suffice. It is, however, the universal practice in British medical schools to require students to clerk patients personally in sizable numbers and for this many more beds are required. The Secretary of State for Social Services has a statutory duty under the NHS Reorganisation Act of 19731 to make available such facilities as he considers are reasonably re? quired for teaching in hospitals associated with medical schools. So proposals for the deployment of resources, particularly of hospital beds, usually include an assessment of whether the number of beds likely to be provided in the future will meet the needs of the appropriate medical school. Almost invariably this assessment has been based on the guidelines published by the University Grants Committee in its annual survey for 1975-6.2 These recommended a total of 1000 acute beds for an annual intake of 100 students, and similar totals were suggested in the Goodenough Report3 in 1944 and in the Todd Report4 in 1968. In particular, the UGC recommendations were quoted in full in Towards a Balance.b This discussion document by the London Health Planning Consortium dealt exclusively with London but it is likely that similar comparisons of service provision and teaching needs are being made in other regions. The consortium stated that, Some medical schools?for example, Westminster?have independently assessed their need