Medical education: retrospective and prospective observations

Significant advances in medicine have occurred in the past 50 years. Medical education, too, has undergone many changes, and is due for an in-depth study and appraisal similar to that of the 1910 Flexner report. Some of the changes in medical education discussed include excessive emphasis on incurable diseases and scientific minutiae instead of practical clinical problems, changes in the roles and images of clinical teachers, importance placed on faculty research, decline in actual patient care, and a new and welcome proliferation of training programs for family physicians. Suggestions are offered for reducing the duration of medical training, and for improving the curriculum and the education of students in medical schools today.