Medicine has always been more than information to download.

It is an inheritance, passed from the hands of one generation to the next.

We may now have the technology to deliver content at a distance, but the essence of our craft has never lived in content. It lives in people.

The contemporary appetite for remote learning in medicine is understandable. Online modules, streamed tutorials and virtual case discussions offer efficiency, flexibility and scalability. They have their uses.

Yet they cannot replace the crucible in which doctors are truly formed. Medicine is not acquired; it is inhabited. It is shaped in hospitals, on wards, in clinics and theatres, under the watchful eyes of those who have seen it all before.