Thursday 24th April 2014 - Giving bad news to students

Some years ago I was with my father in the out-patients department when the consultant told him he had inoperable cancer and had only a matter of weeks to live.  The news was conveyed in an incredibly thoughtful and sensitive way - hinting at the situation rather than being blatant - so much so that three weeks later, when it was all over, I wrote to thank the specialist for the way he had conveyed bad news.  It is something all medical students are trained in as part of their 'communications skills' development, and needs updating throughout their practice years.

I wonder whether academics ought not also to be trained in 'giving bad news'.  Most of us don't like to do it, and we often seek to avoid it.  And although the bad news we may have to give is not going to be of a terminal illness, it can still be life-changing.  I am thinking of the cases I have come across where a postgraduate student just does not match up to the demands of a PhD - and in the judgement of experienced colleagues, never will.  I have seen students being encouraged by their supervisors to prepare a clearly sub-standard thesis for examination in the hope that the examiners will take pity on the student, or drop their standards, and pass it.  The first real inkling the student has that they are not going to get those extra letters after their name, with all that they might open up in terms of prospects, comes at the end of the viva and in the damning follow up report which offers the prospect of an MPhil at best or possibly nothing at all.  I am thinking of other cases I have come across where a succession of glowing progress reports (later claimed to be based on evaluations of  'effort' rather than of 'achievement') have been followed by a Faculty-based review hearing or a refusal by the supervisor to continue working with the student.  In these, and other similar cases, academic staff have backed away from being completely honest with their students and indicating that those students' goals are unlikely  to be achieved.

It is less likely that these things can happen at the undergraduate level because the remorseless accumulation of marks, semester by semester in our modularised system, provides an ongoing indication of an objective measure of progress to the student.  Most adjust their hopes and expectations in the light of their developing record.  Paradoxically it is in the medical degree, with its non-modularised structure, that students sometimes don't realise that their ambition is too high, and that they do not have the ability to qualify.

So perhaps academics should be trained in giving bad news in various forms.  It may sometimes be painful to do so, but being completely honest with our students may enable them to stop wasting their time, to re-set their goals, and to get on with their lives in different ways.