Technology and the undergraduate medical curriculum.

Abstract

Instruction of medical students in the use of technologic procedures in clinical medicine has emerged in recent years on a more or less piecemeal basis. Individual technologies are introduced as the teaching hospital acquires the requisite equipment and personnel; as experience is gained by faculty and attending staff some sense emerges of the indications, contraindications, risks, accuracy, and usefulness of a procedure, which then is transmitted to housestaff and students. Instruction is likely to occur on a case-by-case basis, supplemented occasionally by conferences or formal presentations, generally oriented around major innovations, such as computerized transaxial tomography or magnetic resonance imaging. As relevant clinical literature appears, it is used to reiterate and expand the available information base of trainees, but to a considerably greater extent for housestaff than for students. Ultimately what emerges is a pattern of use, a gestalt, for each technology, reflecting the synthesis of the available information and clinical experience with the procedure in the particular institution. In view of the enormous number and variety of technologies available, the task of the student or house officer in acquiring even basic familiarity with those in common use is formidable. A coherent approach to instruction in the use of technologic procedures is required. Students need, and medical faculties must find, a way to provide intellectual systems for incorporating technologies into the clinical armamentarium in a manner that permits them to be maximally useful.