Changes Needed in Basic Biomedical Sciences Teaching in Cuban Medical Schools

Abstract

Early in the last century, two important events in higher education in the Americas had different degrees of impact on Cuban medical education. The fi rst was Abraham Flexner's 1910 report on quality of medical training in the United States and Canada, [1] which had particular infl uence on curriculum. The second was Argentina's Cordoba Reform of 1918, which had a signifi cant impact on university and political life in Cuba,[2] but less infl uence on curricular reform. [3] Although the Flexner report recommended and presaged a shift in health care models towards more focus on health promotion and disease prevention,[1] the main infl uence of his work on 20thcentury curricula in Cuba and elsewhere was his insistence on the need to strengthen the biomedical scientifi c foundation of medical education. This was refl ected in a curricular structure and content oriented toward hospital-based training emphasizing curative treatment for individual patients.[4] As a result, the basic biomedical sciences became the foundation of medical school curricula, offered as independent courses in the fi rst years of training, as in the case of anatomy, histology, embryology, physiology and biochemistry.