TY - JOUR T1 - Respiratory education: a dangerous drift away from academia? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1144 LP - 1145 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00137008 VL - 32 IS - 5 AU - M. Polkey AU - T. Howes AU - G. Burns AU - S. G. Spiro Y1 - 2008/11/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/32/5/1144.abstract N2 - The education of specialist doctors in respiratory medicine has evolved over a long time. The importance of the clinical apprenticeship was stressed by Hippocrates and evolved through European medicine into the 20th century. Part of this clinical apprenticeship has developed into an early exposure to medical research. A minority of medical students are able to be involved in this process before final examinations, but in past decades junior doctors gained their initial experience during the first few years of their career. Many senior doctors remember these experiences with great fondness. These small pieces of clinical research, and the resultant abstracts at local meetings produced by these junior doctors, sowed the seeds for a life-long interest in medical research. Over recent years, the taught element of junior doctors’ training, at least in the UK, has increased. In many ways, this has benefited the training process. However, the pressures to achieve parity of training across Europe, and to shorten training to meet a perceived need for an expansion in the number of senior doctors to cope with all that respiratory medicine has to cover, has led to a perception that research in training is much less sought after and important to those trainees planning … ER -