Back to the bedside: the role of bedside teaching in the modern era

Fifty years ago, three-quarters of clinical teaching was at the bedside [1]. Today’s estimates are 8–19 % [2]. This reduced exposure in undergraduate years to a critical aspect of training may be responsible, in part, for the declining clinical skills of junior doctors [3]. Peters and ten Cate [4] have reviewed the literature on bedside teaching, assessing its strengths, the causes of its decline, and its potential role in medical education.