Sociology in American medical education since the 1960s: the rhetoric or reform

Despite recommendations by medical reformers that medical sociology be included in the curriculum, there is currently little evidence of a far-reaching integration of sociological perspectives in American medical education. Yet, support for the relevance of sociological knowledge has since the late 1960s helped to diffuse external pressures for change in health care and medical education. As a symbol of the communitarian commitment of the medical profession, claims in favor of the incorporation of sociological perspectives have thus occasionally, and largely unintentionally, served the public relations interests of biomedicine. However, the more recent interest in medical ethics has to some degree transformed medicine's educational agenda and the definition of medical 'human values'. Whereas the rhetorical expropriation of medical sociology primarily has concerned medicine's responsibility vis-à-vis society as a whole, the new medical ethics education signifies a return to a more individualistically oriented medical morality.