10%

In a recent department meeting, our student representatives and the man from Jupiter had a remarkable conversation on our students' attendance to bedside teaching.

The original idea of our students were, I must say, rather simple and straightforward: They were asked to have their logbooks signed by the teacher after each session of clinical tutorial, and they believed that's silly; they are adults and should have the right to decide how to make the best use of their time. After all, signing the log book could be a pain in the neck for the tutors.

I fully agree.

However, our chairman and a few other colleagues were not at ease - and they had a point. Some of the clinical teaching sessions were poorly attended and it became a headache for the teacher. (More importantly, the attendance may not correlate with the quality of the teaching - it's more related to the timing in relation to our students' panel examination.)

And, at the end of the day, the question boils down to: If a student attends, say, only 10% of the teaching sessions, but performed well in the examination, both written and clinical, should we allow him to pass and practice?