Develop. Med. Child Neurol. 1972, 14, 135-136

EDITORIAL

VISITORS ONE developing feature of medicine, particularly in academic circles, is the visitor. He may be a visiting professor spending his ‘sabbatical’ with us, or he may be a trainee orthopaedic surgeon rotating through a cerebral palsy centre for a quick two-month’s grasp of what cerebral palsy is all about. He may be a medical student who has decided to spend his three-month elective looking at another country and, at the same time, finding out what our sort of hospital and com- munity paediatrics is all about.

Do we get the best out of our visitors? Do we learn from them, or do we simply use them to demonstrate that we have a very good department and want to show it off?

We both remember making visits when we arrived at the party with our harps (slides, in this case) for talks on topics on which we felt we could contribute something, only to find that our hosts didn’t ask us to play. They were more pre-occupied with telling us the good things they were doing, and no-one was interested in what we had to tell them. Perhaps we have grandiose ideas about people listening to us; nevertheless, because of the mass of scientific litera- ture there is to get through and the constant pressures of teaching and clinical work upon one’s time, it does seem important to extract as much benefit as possible from these potentially valuable face-to-face confrontations.

The host must first make his visitor welcome, not only for courtesy sake allowing him to play his harp, but organising tutorials and seminars with members of staff so that ideas can be exchanged. These meetings may be at different levels for different visitors: we have felt that British students have gained a great deal from sessions in which they discussed their training critically with an outsider from another country, but a visiting professor may be most bene- ficially used in tutorials with junior members of staff of the depart- ment, so that he leaves behind a lasting memory of his special ideas.

How can we best give to the visitors? There are many minor matters which may confuse him, and to have a member of staff with whom he can be in constant contact during the first week or two will allow the humble or distinguished visitor to learn how the department functions. Formal presentation of what is being done

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comes later, and will be more appreciated when the visitor is aware of some of the difficulties and problems behind a glossy exterior.

The visitor away for his sabbatical often relaxes and thinks he need do nothing, and often he is insensitive to the pressures in the department he is visiting. As a visitor, it is perhaps not wise to inform one’s host at once that things are much better organised back home; one may realise later that the complexities of one department-or one city-are different from those of another.

We write from a feeling of our own failure to provide ‘X’ and ‘Y’ with an adequate opportunity to give our unit when they were with us what they had to give. In future, if anyone else does come, we shall try to give him a better welcome.

RONALD MAC KEITH MARTIN BAX

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