The student diary survey: a method of monitoring hospital-based medical education.

A new system of allocating the Service Increment for Teaching (SIFT) has recently been introduced which, by its nature, encourages universities to be more explicit about their teaching requirements. A detailed study of the quantity of teaching received by Leicester clinical medical students was carried out using a student diary. This instrument enables a data base to be constructed which is useful for academic and resource allocation purposes. This information can also be used to estimate the teaching time in the different sites and the source of funding of the teaching staff and thereby provide insights into the 'knock-for-knock' system of informal cost-sharing between universities and the National Health Service.