Today, the teaching of medicine must focus primarily on the clinical competencies expected of a physician, which enable them to practise their career in an adequate manner. In this regard, the clinical setting is the ideal place to teach-learn such competencies. Yet, the teaching of clinical medicine through the teaching of clinical practice has, as we stand today, its drawbacks, which must be identified, and also its strengths, which need to be fostered. In this work we present the first data from 'Teaching how to be a doctor', a cross-sectional study conducted in the hospital setting in centres associated with the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. We report the qualitative analysis of the opinions of professionals involved in the teaching of clinical practice, which was carried out by means of a structured and pre-coded survey, with both open-ended and semi-open-ended questions. The weaknesses that were detected include: the excessive theoretical component of the teaching, some specific shortcomings in training (interprofessional relationships and communication), scarce promotion of research, the continued presence of the medical resident exam (MIR) as a referent and the rift between teaching and healthcare duties in hospitals. Some of the strengths of the current teaching practice include: students are very well prepared on finishing their training, they have a high level of academic achievement and, significantly, we are beginning to see some innovative changes in the way medicine is taught.