MEDICAL SERVICE AS A MEDICAL SCHOOL FUNCTION

Abstract

Perhaps the two greatest developments in American medical education in the past 50 years have been the acceptance of the basic sciences as the foundation of medical practice and the introduction of the student in his clinical years to the wards and outpatient clinics as a full-fledged member of the health team. One of the major criteria applied by Abraham Flexner to the medical schools he evaluated in 1909 was the extent to which undergraduate students had access to patients. Henry Pritchett in his introduction to The Flexner Report wrote: A hospital under complete educational control is as necessary to a medical school as is a laboratory of chemistry or pathology. High grade teaching within a hospital introduces a most wholesome and beneficial influence into its routine. At that time only a handful of medical schools made use of bedside teaching while most resorted to demonstration of a few patients