Monday 25 August 2008

Training

Burried deep within the comments of an interesting post on nurses' training experiences 'bout medication I found this gem.

FOFOY training.

Fuck Off and Find Out Yourself training.

I like being spoon fed. Undergraduate education seems to have swung too far away from this, though, with espoused "adult self directed learning" ideas.

FOFOY. It really is how far too much medical (doctors and nurses) training seems to be, nowadays.

11 comments:

Dragonfly said...

Love it.

Dr Grumble said...

Some years ago I was specially trained to deliver problem-based learning. The main thing that they trained you to do was to just facilitate and not to give the attending throng any of your words of wisdom. In short in was institutionalised FOFOY training.

It was very easy as a 'teacher'. It was easy because you yourself did not need to know anything or contribute anything. The only good thing about it was that by observing you could quickly identify the best students and see the depths of student ignorance. But putting them right was not allowed. They had to do that for themselves.

If you resisted this approach as a teacher you were regarded as a Luddite. As with so many things people like me just shut up and did what we were told. In some medical schools this form of teaching predominated. The student victims readily relate how bad it was.

It's amazing how poorly teaching methods are evaluated. The evidence base for different teaching methods is lacking. Some even claim you can never produce an evidence base (for quite sound reasons).

cellar_door said...

Self directed study is supposed to supplement lectures and seminars, as far as I am aware. However, in my experience (I can't speak for other uni's) it is often occuring instead of them. Taught sessions (of which we might have 12 hours a week) are cancelled and we are sent to the library. Reasons for this include staff sickness, lecturers being unable to make the lecture last a full hour and it being friday afternoon. Since we dont get tested on a lot of it, it's easy to not learn about it.

A Truly Registered Mental Nurse said...

I'm glad to have provided an acronym which appropriately sums up the ethos behind nursing training. I trained 6 years ago, and my husband is currently about to embark on his 3rd year of training as an RMN. I'm pleased to report that the teaching staff continue to fly the flag of FOFOY, and I am sure they will continue to endeavour to indentify as many stategies as possible where this ethos can be backed up as being "evidence based programme of effective learning".

What a load of wank.

ps. FOFOY is copywritten so you owe me £12.

pps. I am currently fending off my own low mood, and can I say that reading yours and others blogs have lifted my mood far more than the lucky dip combination of meds I am currently prescibed.Yay.

ditzydoctor said...

i love being spoon fed! am guilty. but FOFOY is really the new thing nowadays. :(

on an unrelated note, we'd psychiatry presentations today and someone put up your blogger id photo and i instantly thought of you! :D

cellar_door said...

Twelve quid for FOFOY?! I'll give you a packet of 'liberated' loz's for it...

InEx said...

Is this why a lot of people with mental health issues get FOTYT care

Fuck off and take your tablets!

A Truly Registered Mental Nurse said...

How many other acronyms can we come up with? hmmmmmmm.....that gives me an idea for a new post on my blog

Anonymous said...

It's not just Doctors and nurses who get FOFOY training. Lawyers do as well :(

Elaine said...

After reading all the complaints made by The Little Medic about PBL, I think he would love the term FOFOY.

Milk and Two Sugars said...

Grumble. I wrote about that one a while ago...

Truely, it's a perfectly accurate discription. I've come to believe that I'm learning medicine despite my medical school. It's turned me into a pretty passionate teacher.