Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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The most effective way to integrate philosophy into medical education uses ethical, social, and conceptual problems arising in medical practice such as those about informed consent, confidentiality, competency, resource allocation, the doctor-patient relationship, and death and dying. Medical students become better physicians by learning salient views on these matters and by developing philosophical skills and attitudes to (1) examine key assumptions; (2) broaden their perspectives and gain self-knowledge; (3) develop critical thinking skills about the kind of judgments they make, how bias affects their views, and the scope and limits of their knowledge claims; (4) generate tolerance, openness, and skepticism about dogma; and (5) cultivate empathy. Learning these skills and dispositions using moral, conceptual, and social issues facing them will enable students to recognize these issues when they arise in their medical practices and learn how to respond to them in justifiable ways. It will also strengthen the health care profession and institutions overall by fostering the openness, the questioning mind, and the critical thinking essential to the practice of good medicine.
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History has long played a role in the education of American physicians, but the uses of medicine's past have changed over time. In the late nineteenth century, some physicians taught medical history to their students to supply a sense of continuity with professional traditions in times of rapid and bewildering change. Other physicians believed that instruction in medical history would impart a sense of refinement to medical practitioners. ⋯ In some schools, history is integrated into the teaching of medical humanities. Where medical history is institutionally distinct from the humanities, courses in medical history may be either elective or required. In order to reach students at every stage of their medical education, historians and clinicians can join forces to teach history in innovative and flexible programs.
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In this baseline study, the authors analyze in detail many of the factors that influenced the research career intentions of the 1994 U. S. graduates of MD-only programs. Studies of the research interests of the nation's medical school graduates are important because MD-PhD programs do not produce sufficient numbers of physician-scientists, and the remainder must come from the regular population of medical graduates. ⋯ A number of findings emerged concerning the 1994 graduates. A greater percentage of these students who began medical school with strong research career intentions and maintained these intentions had entered private medical schools. The lower rate of research interest amongst the students enrolled in public medical schools was compounded by the significantly greater loss of earlier research intentions of those in public schools compared with those in private schools.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)