Students sitting finals: ready to be house officers?

It was of some concern to me that the medical students questioned in the preliminary study, to identify a group of ‘core skills’ they would need regularly in their house officer year, did not include basic life support or any form of airway management. Perhaps these most important and fundamental of clinical skills were not perceived as likely to be regularly needed during the preregistration year. Or do we have a more worrying explanation—a perception that dealing with a cardiopulmonary arrest is purely the responsibility of the ‘crash team’ or that our anaesthetic colleagues will always be able to appear instantaneously?