[50th anniversary--cheers to the internship?].
This year the mandatory internship scheme for Norwegian doctors celebrates its 50th anniversary. Internships were instituted by a Decree in Council in 1954 and implemented the year after. History shows that there has been and still is a lack of commitment to the organisation as well as the content of internships. It also shows that there has been a lack of adequately formulated objectives and how detrimental this state of affairs is to the educational quality of internships. Today we face threats that the scheme may be abolished altogether. Among the reasons for this is a lack of commitment among senior doctors to supervision and mentoring, inadequate funding and, probably the most important single reason, a lack of thorough evaluation of the existent scheme. New models for internship content have been proposed by the medical authorities, but in the view of the Norwegian Medical Association the existent model should be evaluated before new models are tried out. This article shows what an important asset the internship scheme is and the necessity of arguing for keeping it.
Brinchmann-Hansen
Ase
A
Medisinsk fagavdeling, Den norske laegeforening, Postboks 1152 Sentrum, 0107 Oslo. aase.brinchmann.hansen@legeforeningen.no
D005550:Foreign Medical Graduates; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000266:history* / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008611:Mentors; D009664:Norway; D011231:Preceptorship