Can the Education of the Physician Be Made More Rational?

The Medical School Revisited

“…beginning as it does in the middle of one's education in science and ending about one-third of the way through one's clinical training." 3 The so-called basic medical sciences that are taught the first two years in medical school are no longer unique to medicine. They have the same base in modern cell biology and molecular biology as do their counterparts in faculties of arts and sciences.…”

“…I have suggested a way that these might be integrated, but there appears to be no interest whatsoever in the suggestion, not, as nearly as I can judge, for educational reasons, but rather for reasons of turf and control. 19 Clinical departments are determined to guard their control of residency training, yet it may be that the solution to who will pay for graduate education can only have a rational solution if there is a better analysis of how student status changes into practicing physician status as a continuum, and not abruptly in quantum jumps. Medical students provide some service during their clinical years of training, and the amount of service provided increases considerably in the first postgraduate year, but both medical students and first-year residents continue to be students so that the change in function is a quantitative one rather than qualitative.…”