[The role of support elements in medical education]

There is a definite and inexorable trend in medical schools toward changes in the training of physicians. This transformation of medical education is being seen in the most traditional schemes, which predominate in the medical schools of Latin America, and the most modern and complex approaches, even though they are relatively a minority phenomenon in many countries. This article examines the support facilities needed at each stage of this evolution: libraries, communication media, teaching and physical resources and technologies, and hospital and laboratory facilities. It also describes the influence of each of them on the physician's training. The author is of the view that the common denominator among all aspects of medical education, from the student's physical environment to the sophisticated resources embodied in computers, must be the interpersonal relationship. The ideal situation in which the healthy professions can profit fully from the rationalization and management of knowledge in the medical school setting is one of rapprochement between the transmitters (teachers) and receivers (students) of information, whether medical or in any other subject.