AAMC President Jordan J. Cohen, MD, discusses "champion of medical education". Interview by Brian Vastag.

Abstract

WASHINGTON—Tucked away in a leafy corner of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood here, the headquarters of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) could stand as a metaphor for the organization itself. A sturdy, traditional five-story office block faced with trendy salmon-colored bricks, the building sports a thoroughly modern interior, all shiny chrome and sparkling glass. A central atrium opens the space, brightening dozens of cubicles and offices. As he talks about the fate of medical education, AAMC President Jordan J. Cohen, MD, projects a similar aura: grounded in tradition and embracing the future. It’s a critical time for him to look ahead, as myriad pressures squeeze medical education. Declining interest from young people, spiraling health care costs, highly publicized research protection failures, competition with research and clinical endeavors, and waning faculty morale situate AAMC’s members—141 US and Canadian medical schools and some 400 teaching hospitals—in an unstable nexus as the organization celebrates its 125th anniversary. Such turbulence wasn’t always the status quo. Founded in 1876 by the deans of 22 US medical schools, AAMC’s early days were characterized by malaise. Internecine squabbling over education guidelines effectively shuttered the organization from 18831890, when it was reinvigorated by the deans of Baltimore’s four medical schools ( Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and two now defunct schools, Baltimore Medical College and Baltimore University School of Medicine). Still, there were no rigorous standards. In 1910, the Flexner report on medical education advocated reforms called for by the AAMC and others. At the top of the list: providing more clinical learning opportunities. However, the recommendations languished and clinical teaching remained largely unheard of until after World War I, when military officers returned home and complained about the poor work of field physicians. The movement for improved medical education coalesced in the 1920s, after the AAMC and the American Medical Association set aside a turf war and formed the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which eight decades later is still accrediting US medical schools. After World War II the AAMC came into its own. A flurry of standards, conferences, and seminars broadened the association’s impact, entrenching the organization as the primary force in medical education. An earnest 1965 ex-