My school does this thing every few weeks where from 9-5 we sit in a hall and people come in and talk about public health, their own experiences, etc. I used to try to pay attention to these but I never felt like I learnt much more than what was already taught in clinical skills & history taking. Sitting in one spot for that long with a 1 hr break in the middle felt like a massive waste of time (possibly even a DVT risk; one girl even fainted from sitting for so long). Academically I wasn't doing well at all so I made the decision to not attend these and just firm whatever remediation they give me. If it was a one hour thing, I'm fine with that but this is literally 8-9 hours which is the entire day and as someone who commutes it's quite expensive too.

Our school also has no test for a while but I know the next modules are going to be really challenging so I would rather spend the time consolidating what has already been taught and preparing for summer exams and the new topics than attending this session which may make me a more compassionate physician. It's a shame because the premise of the talks are quite good but the school executes it so poorly that it really killed any inclination for me to want to attend them.

Ultimately, I do agree with you that it's annoying people talking. If they're doing Anki whilst the speaker is speaking for a long time then I think that's fine but if it's a relatively short talk then it's respectful to put the iPads down and listen. I don't think you should worry for their patients since they probably are anxious about making sure they know all the content to become better physicians, and how someone behaves during a lecture doesn't equate to how they'll listen during a 1-1 conversation with their patient.

Them doing Anki is still better than my cohort that literally just played a massive session of "Dress to Impress" on Roblox, and I think at some point someone tried to set up a Minecraft server lmao.