Use of TV for Clinical Training: A Fifteen Year Perspective

Abstract

The explosive growth in the understanding of medicine has demanded a radical change in teaching methods. Modern teaching methods have to be highly flexible, they must put the information effectively across and they must be quick and easy to apply. In many European countries, the USA and the developing countries, the use of television plays an important role in teaching. In recent years, the use of television has increased in both clinical and theoretical medicine. At the moment, the principle uses of medical television are in psychiatry, radiology, dentistry, physiology, pathology, orthopaedics, surgery, neurology, endoscopy, child psychiatry and pharmacology. The use of television for teaching is considered especially suitable in psychiatry, and the importance of television in this area has increased so much that in most medical faculties it is not considered possible to teach psychiatry without television. Videotapes must be seen as a form of information storage akin to the printed word.