A Call for Change: Four New Goals for Today's Medical Education
One hundred years after the publication of the 1910 ground-breaking Flexner Report the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education has issued a new report, Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency. Authored by Molly Cooke, David Irby, and Bridget O'Brien, the report describes a new blueprint for standardization and reforms needed to "bring medical education to the next level of excellence." The book reviews today's medical education current practices and makes recommendations for future goals and standards of teaching.
The new report proposes four new goals in medical education designed to be an extension of Flexner's earlier findings and intended to be a platform for change. The report's findings and recommendations of changes are best described in Chapters Seven and Eight where readers will find examples of medical programs following the principles of individualization, integration, inquiry and identity as well recommendations for policy actions and how to implement changes needed to reach the new standardized goals.
The key findings of the new report recommend the following four goals for today's medical education:
- Standardization and individualization
Medical education should include standardized learning outcomes, general competencies as well as options for individualized learning experience for advance studies. - Integration of formal knowledge and clinical experience
To help prepare medical students for practice, they need to experience integration of skills and knowledge. "Medical students should be given early clinical immersion, and residents should have more intense exposure to the sciences and best evidence underlying their practices." - Development of habits of inquiry and innovation
Medical schools and teaching hospitals need to prepare students to acquire skills needed for both routine and adaptive methods of expertise and help develop good habits of "inquiry, discovery, and innovation." - Focus on professional identity formation
A primary focus of medical education should be helping to create a professional identity and guiding the professional values and aspirations of the individual.
Please note the Himmelfarb Library has five copies available of Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency. Three copies are located in the stacks circulating collection and two on reserve.
