Medical education and economics

The time available to medical students for learning is scarce in relation to the knowledge they are asked to absorb. New material should not therefore be added to medical curricula without careful consideration of the benefits of the extra knowledge compared to the costs of obtaining this knowledge. In this paper a justification for integrating economic principles into medical education is presented. It would benefit society by encouraging the practice of efficient medicine, and benefit students by giving them the ability to absorb the growing economic content of the medical literature and by encouraging an appreciation of why economic factors will influence their clinical decision-making. These benefits would accrue at little cost because only a limited number of economic concepts need to be absorbed by medical students. The critical concepts are outlined and some of the obstacles to students applying this knowledge in practice are considered. The paper concludes by suggesting that the impact of teaching economics to medical students should be evaluated, but this will require further research into ways of evaluating the outcome of medical education programmes in general.