Flexner, Where Are You Now When We Need You So Badly?

Abstract

The famous Carnegie Foundation Report of 1910, which revolutionized the teaching of medicine in North America, had relatively little to say about postgraduate education.1 The author, Abraham Flexner, did note, however, that it was difficult to dislodge the "unpleasant suspicion" that commercial motives lay behind programs for postgraduate instruction at the time of his survey. For example, one instructor told him, with cynical candor, "it pays the teachers through referred cases;" another remarked, "it pays through advertising teachers."