The medical school I (S.M.) attended did not require dissection of a cadaver to fulfill the requirements of the anatomy curriculum. I had "learned" human anatomy through lectures, text books, and an atlas, but did no dissection. Although it was difficult doing anatomy that way, I passed basic science exams ...

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to demonstrate whether an intensive block curriculum would lead to learning of basic medical interviewing skills by first year residents in medicine. METHOD: Pairs of brief clinical interviews done before and after a four week block program in medical interviewing were rated using the Rhode Island ...

In preparing for a full featured online curriculum, it is necessary to develop scaleable strategies for software design that will support the pedagogical goals of the curriculum and which will address the issues of acquisition and updating of materials, of robust content-based linking, and of integration of the online materials ...

Human anatomy forms the foundation for clinical medicine; thus its place in the medical school curriculum deserves careful attention. In an attempt to provide guidance to decision-makers involved in clinical anatomy curriculum development at the medical school level, the Educational Affairs Committee of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) ...

The health care systems of highly industrialized countries are being restructured in the face of aging populations, economic dislocations, and limited resources. They also face reforms to medical education. Despite significant differences in their systems, countries can learn from examining the advantages and disadvantages of others' approaches to educating medical ...

In a time of financial constraints, Harvard Medical School's Countway Library has found a way to acquire additional funding to expand its services while integrating librarians further into the medical school organization. This paper describes the contractual arrangement between the library and a medical school department and shows how a ...

The study of jurisprudence--law, legal reasoning, and the legal system--has become progressively more common in medical school curricula. Familiarity with jurisprudence helps physicians practice medicine well, collaborate productively with lawyers, and be more effective in public discourse about health care delivery. Moreover, the study of jurisprudence can help physicians polish ...

The authors describe the advantages and disadvantages of central governance of the undergraduate medical curriculum as contrasted with traditional departmental approaches, based upon their school's experience with a new centrally governed curriculum during the preceding four years. Central governance has more advantages, but also more costs, compared with traditional departmental ...

Skill in creating, finding, managing, and using biomedical information is a vital component of modern medical practice. Medical schools recognize the revolutionary implications of computing technology and use a number of different strategies to integrate "informatics education" into their curricula. In many institutions, leadership for this effort rests with the ...

BACKGROUND: The Transfusion Medicine Academic Awards (TMAA) program, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, has provided grants to medical schools to help them develop comprehensive curricula in transfusion medicine. In 1989, the TMAA Group published a set of comprehensive curricular goals for teaching transfusion medicine. The medical ...

When the author completed medical school in 1981, the importance of psychoneuroimmunology, treating patients as a 'whole person', and experiencing meditation as a form of stress management, were not covered in the medical curriculum as they are now. This article gives a brief overview of these topics and presents several ...

Spiro has said, "computed tomographic scans offer no compassion and magnetic resonance imaging has no human face. Only men and women are capable of empathy." Empathy is an essential and required part of our roles as caregivers. We must enhance this natural emotion that exists in each of us; we ...

The United States is facing the challenge of producing more generalists for the physician workforce. The Primary Care Organizations' Consortium (PCOC) has responded by focusing on how medical education can be modified to enhance and support medical students' interest in and commitment to generalism early in their training. Evolving from ...

With the class of 1996, Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine instituted a totally revised curriculum. The revisions transformed an entirely traditional curriculum to a student-centred curriculum, which is based on learning in context, and incorporates a problem-based approach to the entire curriculum. This paper describes our experience in the actual ...

his paper outlines a rationale for medical schools to integrate medical informatics into their curricula. The approach used in the problem-based undergraduate curriculum at Dalhousie University School of Medicine is presented in three areas: organizational structure, implementation, and curriculum development. Seven goal areas defined to guide the curriculum development process ...

In the United Kingdom most medical schools have traditionally included dissection as a major component of their anatomy courses. There is a dearth of substantive literature which can be used to demonstrate the educational values of dissection, although many authors have expressed opinions. Current scrutiny of the role of dissection ...

At Dalhousie, we integrated medical informatics as a horizontal theme in the problem-based learning undergraduate medical education curriculum. The rationales for these initiatives can be addressed along the following dimensions: political, philosophical, psychological, educational, and professional practice. Student attitudes towards computers are changing, and incoming students are increasingly computer-literate. Of ...

Medical services which are better suited to the needs of the community are increasingly demanded, for example by national governments, and depend to a great extent on education of the new generations of doctors. Problem-based learning in general practice at the community level represents a method of providing appropriate education. ...

In response to the General Medical Council's 1991 Consultative Document proposing changes to medical curricula, the King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, established a steering group to plan a new curriculum. As part of this process a postal survey was undertaken of five cohorts of King's graduates to ...

The present curriculum for clinical pharmacology during undergraduate medical training appears very inadequate as evidenced from the analysis of a questionnaire sent to all medical schools in the country. Recognising the need for the subject to be taught in a meaningful way and keeping in view the suggestions made through ...

Trends in patient morbidity and mortality, cost-effectiveness, and national recommendations mandate that we practice more preventive medicine. To address this need, we set out to develop a comprehensive curriculum in preventive medicine for medical schools. We constructed a competency-based (i.e., performance-based) curriculum with specific educational objectives defined by outcomes. Subject ...

The medical informatics curriculum at University of Heidelberg/School of Technology Heilbronn started in 1972 as a specialized university curriculum. In this paper, we report on 20 years of experience and the evolution of this educational approach with respect to structure and content of the curriculum. We emphasize that this evolution ...

The specialized university curriculum for medical informatics at the University of Heidelberg/School of Technology Heilbronn described in this paper is one of the oldest educational approaches in the field of medical informatics, and has been successful for more than 20 years with more than 600 graduates (Diplom-Informatiker der Medizin). It ...

PURPOSE: To examine changes in substance abuse education in U.S. medical schools between 1976 and 1992. METHODS: In 1991-92 the authors conducted a 16-year follow-up survey of six clinical departments in each of the 126 U.S. medical schools. Two previous surveys by scholars and surveys conducted by the Liaison Committee ...

'... the undergraduate curriculum should seek to promote a more self-educative approach'. That statement by the General Medical Council in July 1990 coincided with the restructuring of the medical curriculum at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. One of the main proposals was the introduction of self-directed learning to reduce didactic ...

PURPOSE: To broaden the understanding of how medical schools can help students learn an approach to health care that reflects the integration of psychosocial and biomedical factors in health and illness. METHOD: A qualitative research design was used, with data collected through document review and semi-structured interviews conducted in the ...

Special Forces Medical Sergeants (18 Delta) in the U.S. Army play a key role in delivering medical care in both combat and civil affairs arenas. Given the breadth of skills required and potential decrement of skills with time, recertification is desirable and mandated. However, there are no formal courses for ...

Two case studies were conducted to investigate the utility of curriculum-based measurement of math and reading for evaluating the effects of methylphenidate on the academic performance of 2 students diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Following baseline measurement, double-blind placebo-controlled procedures were employed to evaluate each student's response to three ...

The concept of problem-based learning (PBL) is sweeping through many schools of medicine in North America. Medical curricula are undergoing significant changes to reflect this learning philosophy. This paper analyzes the rationale behind this approach with emphasis on its impact on the teaching of otolaryngology--head and neck surgery in both ...

There is a growing concern over the quality of medical education for undergraduates in India. This paper is an attempt to define a need-based curriculum and outline the initiatives taken by the Medical Council of India (M.C.I.) in developing a need-based curriculum. The steps include: clear delineation of goals and ...

Four medical institutes, viz, AIIMS, New Delhi; CMC, Vellore; JIPMER, Pondicherry and IMS-BHU, Varanasi formed a consortium to introduce reforms in undergraduate medical education. A detailed inquiry was conducted by administering questionnaires to the faculty, recent graduates and patients to identify the deficiencies in the present system. Morbidity patterns prevalent ...

Final-year undergraduate medical students were given a questionnaire on the gross anatomy curriculum they had experienced in their first year at medical school 5 years earlier. They were asked to evaluate the relevance of the dissection course, lectures and seminars in gross anatomy for clinical courses, clerkships, and everyday practical ...

The curriculum at the Medical School, University of Tromsø reserves 23 weeks for optional studies, including a period of 12 weeks at the end of the fifth year when the students carry out an independent study and write a short thesis. Of the first 417 doctors (graduation year 1979-89) from ...

This paper reviews some of the developmental procedures regarding changes in Medical Education within the Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies. Discussed are some of the constraints experienced in attempting curriculum changes in the established Medical School at Mona, Jamaica, as compared with the implementation of a ...

The recent trend toward problem-based learning (PBL) in American medical education amounts to one of the most significant changes since the Flexner report motivated global university affiliation. In PBL, fundamental knowledge is mastered by the solving of problems, so basic information is learned in the same context in which it ...

Concerns have been expressed about the failure of the medical curriculum to address the health-care needs of the chronically ill. It has been shown in the literature that medical students develop cynicism and negative feelings towards chronic illness as they progress through their training, perhaps as a result of the ...

Injuries and diseases of the musculoskeletal system account for more than 20% of patient visits to primary care and emergency medical practitioners. However, less than 3% of the pre-clinical medical school curriculum is devoted to teaching all aspects of musculoskeletal disease, and only 12% of medical schools require mandatory training ...

Numerous study commissions have contended that departmental territoriality and lack of coordinated planning are stagnating contemporary medical education. As a cure, these commissions have recommended the creation of centralized academic management units empowered to oversee revitalization of the curriculum through a series of reforms, including better definition of graduation competencies, ...

The relationship between performance measures in medical school and in practice is addressed in this article in terms of the relevance to the physician's practice of the facts learned in medical school. It is argued that despite the fact that "relevance" and "irrelevance" are relative terms, medical education should place ...

An account of the establishment of a Problem Based Learning (PBL) curriculum at the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex Republic of Trinidad and Tobago provides the forum for a critical analysis of this process and for dialogue with current relevant literature on similar attempts elsewhere. Initial resistance to change and ...

Recent innovations in medical education have highlighted the need for faculty involved with the curriculum to carefully examine curricular content with goals of detecting omissions and unwanted redundancies of subject matter, adding and integrating new content, and deleting old content. A number of medical schools have attempted to deal with ...

Successful innovation and change in the way medical students are prepared are notoriously difficult. The relationship between the administrative structures of the medical school and its teaching hospitals, other responsibilities of its teachers and administrators, and the intricacies of the curriculum as a system of interrelated components, mean that any ...

Three months after the launch of the MMR programme in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a postal questionnaire was sent to all GP scheme trainees in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The response rate was 81%. All trainees were enthusiastic about promoting MMR immunisation; ...

Medical education in the United States is torn between its allegiance to the Newtonian biomolecular paradigm of medical science that made it so successful in the past and a growing sense, both within academia and without, that medicine needs to become more interdisciplinary and population based. This article explores the ...

This is a descriptive report of a course unit designed to introduce concepts of medical problem-solving during the first month of an undergraduate MD curriculum. The unit is also used to provide an introduction to the dynamics of cooperative small group learning. The value of the unit was endorsed by ...

A newly developed problem-based medical genetics course that was integrated into the fourth-year medical school curriculum of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is described. To provide a basic genetic background for the clinical rotations, a supplemental computer tutorial is required during the second year. These ...

In 1991 the authors surveyed all U.S. medical schools to assess both the number of curriculum hours devoted to the topic of homosexuality and the instructional strategies employed in its academic treatment; responses were sought from faculty with responsibility for teaching the topic (mostly directors of medical student education in ...

Changes in medical practice and in the financing of hospital care have resulted in a narrowing spectrum of adult medical illness among hospitalized patients. Residency training based primarily in the hospital underemphasizes many diseases and disorders that are treated exclusively at ambulatory sites. Curriculum modifications should allow for increased training ...

Assessment of medical students in general practice provides a unique challenge to medical educators as it has an extremely broad and varied curriculum. This paper discusses some of the main challenges and choices presented to educators and outlines and one model of assessment currently used at the University of Melbourne. ...

The neuroscience curriculum should take account of the needs of patients and families and both undergraduate and postgraduate education should be guided by three criteria for quality of medical care--clinical competence, communication (and teamwork), and professional values. The assessment and management of neurological disability requires specific knowledge, skills and attitudes ...