“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?”

Preparation for the Professions Project THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING.

“Educating Medical Students” What’s the Goal?” The state of medical students’ education in the early years of the 21 st century (100 years after Flexner) – describe: - the educational program -preparation for the study of medicine -university-medical school relationships comment on: - major contemporary challenges

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” MAJOR CONTEMPORAY CHALLENGE The design and conduct of the program, and the requirements that should be met for the study of medicine, should be based on a clear understanding of the goal of the program!

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” A bit of history – preparation for practice – preparation for residency – general professional education What is meant by the term, a general professional education?

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine ( ) - didn’t explicitly define the meaning of the term - criticized by some for failing to emphasize sufficiently the social sciences, behavioral sciences, and humanities - criticized by COD and CAS for seeming to lessen the importance of scientific education

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” Students should learn: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PHYSICIAN

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” What does it mean to be a physician? Promote the health of the public. Provide high quality care to individual patients.

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” Medicine is an applied discipline that requires doctors to care for real persons in real life situations! Almost without regard for specialty, doctors must be educated to understand and be prepared to deal with certain realities of modern medicine: the predominance of chronic illness in modern society behavior as a key factor in the prevention and management of disease culture as a key determinant of relevant beliefs and behaviors socio-economic status as an important determinant of health socio-economic status as a key determinant of access to care care delivered predominantly in community-base ambulatory settings and emergency rooms care delivered by non-physicians and teams composed of physicians and other health professionals

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” Does the current curriculum serve that purpose? pre-clinical education continues to overemphasize biological sciences inpatient services do not provide good learning environments for students clinical education dominated by contact with inpatients afflicted with serious complications of chronic disease or with acute, complex disorders

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” To educate doctors for the practice of modern medicine, the social sciences, behavioral sciences, humanities, and bioethics: must become requirements for the study of medicine relevant content must be integrated throughout the curriculum particular emphasis must be place on the integration of relevant content in the clinical education of students

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” To prepare doctors for the practice of modern medicine, the clinical education of medical students must become more patient-centered, and to accomplish that, it must be redesigned to reflect the current practice environment. In every setting, the focus must be on the patient and his or her life experience! - create ambulatory-based, longitudinal patient care experiences - emphasize the care of patients with chronic illness - provide meaningful experiences in emergency departments - provide meaningful experiences in the patients’ homes, community health centers, nursing homes, and hospice centers

“Educating Medical Students: What’s the Goal?” To ensure that students truly learn what it means to be a doctor! P.S. It must be done in three years!