Modern patterns of medical education
As medical education developed after the Flexner report was published, the distinctive feature was the thoroughness with which theoretical and scientific knowledge were fused with what experience teaches in the practical responsibility of taking care of human beings. Medical education eventually developed into a process that involved four generally recognized stages: premedical, undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing education.
Premedical education and admission to medical school
In the United States, Britain, and the Commonwealth countries, generally, medical schools are inclined to limit the number of students admitted so as to increase the opportunities for each student. In western Europe, South America, and most other countries, no exact limitation of numbers of students is in effect, though there is a trend toward such limitation in some of the western European schools. Some medical schools in North America have developed ratios of teaching staff to students as high as 1 to 1 or 1 to 2, in contrast with 1 teacher to 20 or even 100 students in certain universities in other countries. The number of students applying to medical school greatly exceeds the number finally selected in most countries.
Requirements to enter medical school, of course, vary from country to country, and in some countries, such as the United States, from university to university. Generally speaking, in Western universities, there is a requirement for a specified number of years of undergraduate work and passing of a test, possibly state regulated, and a transcript of grades. In the United States entry into medical school is highly competitive, especially in the more prestigious universities. Stanford University, for instance, accepts only about 5 percent of its applicants. Most U.S. schools require the applicant to take the Medical College Admission Test, which measures aptitude in medically related subjects. Other requirements may include letters of recommendation and a personal interview. Many U.S. institutions require a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent from an undergraduate school. A specific minimum grade point average is not required, but most students entering medical school have between an A and a B average.
The premedical courses required in most countries emphasize physics, chemistry, and biology. These are required in order to make it possible to present subsequently courses in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology with precision and economy of time to students prepared in scientific method and content. Each of the required courses includes laboratory periods throughout the full academic year. Student familiarity with the use of instruments and laboratory procedures tends to vary widely from country to country, however.
Undergraduate education
The medical curriculum also varies from country to country. Most U.S. curriculums cover four years; in Britain five years is normal. The early part of the medical school program is sometimes called the preclinical phase. Medical schools usually begin their work with the study of the structure of the body and its formation: anatomy, histology, and embryology. Concurrently, or soon thereafter, come studies related to function—i.e., physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, and, in many schools, biophysics. After the microscopic study of normal tissues (histology) has begun, the student is usually introduced to pathological anatomy, bacteriology, immunology, parasitology—in short, to the agents of disease and the changes that they cause in the structure and function of the tissues. Courses in medical psychology, biostatistics, public health, alcoholism, biomedical engineering, emergency medicine, ethical problems, and other less traditional courses are becoming more common in the first years of the medical curriculum.
The two or more clinical years of an effective curriculum are characterized by active student participation in small group conferences and discussions, a decrease in the number of formal lectures, and an increase in the amount of contact with patients in teaching hospitals and clinics.
Clinical work begins with general medicine and surgery and goes on to include the major clinical specialties, including obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, disorders of the eye, ear, nose, throat, and skin, and psychiatry. The student works in the hospital’s outpatient, emergency, and radiology departments, diagnostic laboratories, and surgical theatres. The student also studies sciences closely related to medicine, such as pathology, microbiology, hematology, immunology, and clinical chemistry and becomes familiar with epidemiology and the methods of community medicine. Some knowledge of forensic (legal) medicine is also expected. During the clinical curriculum many students have an opportunity to pursue a particular interest of their own or to enlarge their clinical experience by working in a different environment, perhaps even in a foreign country—the so-called elective period. Most students find clinical work demanding, usually requiring long hours of continuous duty and personal commitment.
In the United States after satisfactory completion of a course of study in an accredited medical school the degree of doctor of medicine (M.D.) or doctor of osteopathy (D.O.) is conferred. In Britain and some of the other Commonwealth countries the academic degree conferred after undergraduate studies are completed is bachelor of medicine and of surgery (or chirurgery), M.B., B.S. or M.B., CHb. Only after further study is the M.D. degree given. Similar degrees are conferred in other countries, although they are not always of the same status.
Postgraduate education
On completion of medical school, the physician usually seeks graduate training and experience in a hospital under the supervision of competent clinicians and other teachers. In Britain a year of resident hospital work is required after qualification and before admission to the medical register. In North America, the first year of such training has been known as an internship, but it is no longer distinguished in most hospitals from the total postgraduate period, called residency. After the first year physicians usually seek further graduate education and training to qualify themselves as specialists or to fulfill requirements for a higher academic degree. Physicians seeking special postgraduate degrees are sometimes called fellows.
Continuing education
The process by which physicians keep themselves up-to-date is called continuing education. It consists of courses and training opportunities of from a few days to several months in duration, designed to enable physicians to learn of new developments within their special areas of concern. Physicians also attend medical and scientific meetings, national and international conferences, discussion groups, and clinical meetings, and they read medical journals and other materials, all of which serve to keep them aware of progress in their chosen field. Although continuing education is not a formal process, organizations designed to promote continuing education have become common. In the United States the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education was formed in 1985, and some certifying boards of medical specialties have stringent requirements for continuing education.
The quality of medical education is supervised in many countries by councils appointed by the profession as a whole. In the United States these include the Council on Medical Education and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, both affiliates of the American Medical Association, and the American Osteopathic Association. In Britain the statutory body is the General Medical Council, most of whose members are from the profession, although only a minority of the members are appointed by it. In other countries medical education may be regulated by an office or ministry of public instruction with, in some cases, the help of special professional councils.
Medical school faculty
As applied to clinical teachers the term full-time originally implied an educational ideal: that a clinician’s salary from a university should be large enough to relieve him of any reason for seeing private patients for the sake of supplementing his salary by professional fees. Full-time came to be applied, however, to a variety of modifications; it could mean that a clinical professor might supplement his salary as a teacher up to a defined maximum, might see private patients only at his hospital office, or might see such patients only a certain number of hours per week. The intent of full-time has always been to place the teacher’s capacities and strength entirely at the service of his students and the patients entrusted to his care as a teacher and investigator.
Courses in the medical sciences have commonly followed the formula of three hours of lectures and six to nine hours of laboratory work per week for a three-, six-, or nine-month course. Instruction in clinical subjects, though retaining the formal lecture, have tended to diminish the time and emphasis allowed to lectures in favour of experience with and attendance on patients. Nonetheless, the level of lecturing and formal presentation remains high in some countries.