Sir, it was refreshing to read the response of foundation trainee dentist G. Kane1 to a paper published recently.2 Oxley et al. were felt by Kane and others to be rather critical of the standard of newly qualified graduates.

I find myself applauding the spirit shown and the desire to stand up for one's peer group. A young person entering our profession will have to fight many battles in which such feistiness may be of inestimable value and for years the dental profession has lamentably lacked unity and moral backbone across a range of issues.

Maybe in G. Kane, gender unknown, we have a leader of the future?

However, at the end of the letter, while feeling that trainees develop excellent reflective skills among other things, s/he states the importance of remembering that 'clinical skill is only a quarter of the picture'. Here I must raise my slight concern that, if this really is a widely held idea among the younger members of our profession, I worry that they may have to spend much of their professional lives most ably reflecting on why their patients, failed treatment dangling, are storming the practice exits.

Clinical skills do indeed comprise a broad range – from simple kindness and empathy right through to the highest levels of technical knowledge and dexterity and include the very subjective – like an elephant, clinical acumen can be hard to define, but you certainly know it when you see it. Or are on the receiving end of it!

Clinical skills are all of the picture – though the other abilities valued by G. Kane may well frame those skills to their best and most effective advantage.