Management of obesity: improvement of health-care training and systems for prevention and care.

Although the caloric deficits achieved by increased awareness, policy, and environmental approaches have begun to achieve reductions in the prevalence of obesity in some countries, these approaches are insufficient to achieve weight loss in patients with severe obesity. Because the prevalence of obesity poses an enormous clinical burden, innovative treatment and care-delivery strategies are needed. Nonetheless, health professionals are poorly prepared to address obesity.

The future of UK medical education curriculum - what type of medical graduates do we need?

Many of the issues faced by undergraduate medical students and those planning their curriculum are not new. William Osler, Abraham Flexner and the General Medical Council have in turn made significant contributions to shaping today's UK undergraduate medical curriculum. It is anticipated that the reports from Robert Francis, Don Berwick and the Future Hospitals Commission about patient safety and quality of care will inform future planning.

Substance misuse teaching in undergraduate medical education.

Background: Over 12,000 hospital admissions in the UK result from substance misuse, therefore issues surrounding this need to be addressed early on in a doctor's training to facilitate their interaction with this client group. Currently, undergraduate medical education includes teaching substance misuse issues, yet how this is formally integrated into the curriculum remains unclear.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews with 17 key members of staff responsible for the whole or part of the undergraduate medical curriculum were conducted to identify the methods used to teach substance misuse.

Changing PACES: developments to the examination in 2009.

As a consequence of change in medical, educational and regulatory practice, MRCP(UK) successfully modified the international PACES examination in 2009. This brief paper explains the rationale for change and summarises the development and implementation process.