Foreword

In the dim mists of time, long ago when I and my cohort trained in clinical neurophysiology, we would sit with our consultants as they performed nerve conduction studies and EMG, read around cases, look up the textbooks and then initially supervised and then more independently start performing those tests too. For EEGs and EPs, we would watch our healthcare scientist colleagues to learn the techniques and sit with the boss to learn how to report, before beginning to report tests ourselves, presenting our efforts for confirmation or improvement. After a while we were trusted to work largely unsupervised and then, after several years, were pronounced ready to be a consultant. Nowadays, training is more supervised, has a detailed curriculum, performance indicators and in-service examinations. As a result, it is undoubtedly more thorough and far better. In the UK, an excellent curriculum has also been developed, over several iterations, by members of the British Society of Clinical Neurophysiology. Many textbooks and online educational resources now complement departmental, regional, and national face-to-face training.