Changes in Undergraduate Medical Education

Abstract

MOMENTUM FOR fundamental change in education of American medical students is mounting. Alterations of training are suggested as a logical solution for uneven quality of care, lack of primary physicians, and even widespread disability from long-term disease. 1 There is strong sentiment that such modifications also would improve personal values, attitudes, and professional behaviors of physicians. 2 Statements supporting this impetus include following: the nation is in a health care crisis, [and] to meet this challenge, change in education of physicians is required; 3 and there have been no important changes in organization of medical education over half a century. 4 Tarlov 5 summarized this philosophy in an eloquent plea for a revised conceptual frame-work in which behavioral, sociocultural, and biologic phenomena cast a new configuration for physicians; if adopted, his suggested structure would require substantial changes in medical education. Such pronouncements are persuasive and