Medical education
-
The primary objective of medical education to medical students should not be the recruitment of specialists or to provide instructions about highly sophisticated clinic medicine. Our responsibility towards them is rather to enable them to learn about medical practice in its most prevalent context, which is the community medical practice, and to contribute to their general medical education and the health welfare of their community. The health needed by the nation cannot possibly be provided by specialists. ⋯ Graduates of programmes based on problem-based, community-oriented tracks as opposed to the traditional track should certainly be able to: respond to the health needs and expressed demands of the community, work with the community, stimulate healthy lifestyles and self-care, educate the community as well as their co-workers, solve and stimulate the resolve of both individual and community health problems, orient their own as well as community efforts to health promotion, prevent disease, unnecessary suffering, disability and death, work in and with health teams, if necessary provide leadership to such teams, continue learning lifelong so as to keep competence up to date, and improve this competence as much as possible (Fülöp 1990). A limited literature is available comparing innovative and conventional medical curricula, where the innovative one is based on problem-solving learning with a community-oriented track geared towards community needs (Schmidt 1983). This approach showed that the outcome is better, if directed towards the health needs of the community.
-
This paper presents various views on interprofessional cooperation and discusses the significant components and desired outcomes of such a relationship. Historically, the nurse-doctor relationship has been fraught with conflict; however, the challenge is to dismantle this imbalanced relationship and fashion new interdisciplinary collaboration. Collaborative practice is an ongoing, dynamic process, requiring time to develop. ⋯ Favourable outcomes to collaborative practice outweigh the barriers. No doubt there is synergism when a new partnership is created which is the hallmark of a true interprofessional relationship. This affiliation must be nurtured and reinforced, for it holds great promise for enhancement of patient care and for providing job satisfaction in an increasingly complex and constraining world of health care.