Medical Education, Accreditation and the Nation's Health: Reflections of an Atypical Dean

Abstract

This volume is a highly personal view of the impact of medical education, the current methods of accrediting medical schools, and health care in the United States. The author, Dr Andrew D. Hunt, first dean of the medical school at Michigan State University, has a lifetime of experience in academic medicine. Dr Hunt describes the attempts at Michigan State to develop an innovative, community-oriented medical school curriculum and the difficulties encountered there with accrediting agencies. He recounts his experience in semi-retirement as a part-time member of the medical school administration at Mercer University, where a curriculum similar to that of Michigan State was attempted and met with the same sort of accrediting issues. Finally, he presents the problems of national health care against the background of his own experiences as a patient in a community hospital. The book's message is that medical schools and academic medicine can do much more