MEDICAL EDUCATION

course of study directed toward imparting to persons seeking to become physicians the knowledge and skills required for the prevention and treatment of disease. It also develops the methods and objectives appropriate to the study of the still unknown factors that produce disease or favour well-being. Among the goals of medical education is the production of physicians sensitive to the health needs of their country, capable of ministering to those needs, and aware of the necessity of continuing their own education. It therefore follows that the plan of education, the medical curriculum, should not be the same in all countries. Although there may be basic elements common to all, the details should vary from place to place and from time to time. Whatever form the curriculum takes, ideally it will be flexible enough to allow modification as circumstances alter, medical knowledge grows, and needs change. Attention in this article is focused primarily on general medical education. Additional reading Among the many books devoted to the subject of medical education are the following historical discussions: Abraham Flexner, Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1910, reprinted 1973); and Kenneth M. Ludmerer, Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education (1985). For special information, see the following official publications: Association of American Medical Colleges, AAMC Directory of American Medical Education, 198687, 33rd ed. (1986), Medical School Admission Requirements, 198889, 38th ed. (1987), and Physicians for the Twenty-first Century: Report to the Project Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine (1984). Studies include Mohan L. Garg and Warren M. Kleinberg, Clinical Training and Health Care Costs: A Basic Curriculum for Medical Education (1985); and Marjorie Price Wilson and Curtis P. McLaughlin, Leadership and Management in Academic Medicine (1984).For new developments in medical education, see the periodicals The Journal of Medical Education (monthly), Medical Education (bimonthly), and WHO Chronicle (bimonthly). Opportunities for continuing medical education appear semiannually in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association (weekly).