Recent Medical School Research Articles

Deus Ex Machina in Perspective

In his August 16, 1976, JAMA editorial entitled, Are Medical Schools Neglecting Clinical Skills? George L. Engel, MD, suggests that the clinical acumen of recent medical school graduates suffers substantially due to reliance upon technological support mechanisms. 1 The debate concerning clinical and economic efficacy of technologic innovation has become intense in recent times, particularly as legislation holds the promise of transferring control over medical technology from the medical environment to governmental bureaucracy. To the debate, Dr Engel adds the concern that technology has eroded the clinician's ability to render sound, intellectual judgment. Reliance upon a computer or other mechanical contrivances to develop clinical data may portend the diminution of clinical skills, and there may be the potential for educational deficits concerning the conceptual determinants upon which mechanized clinical data development is predicated. However, to impute causality for these prospects to an overabundance of technology represents a non sequitur that

Barefoot doctors and the medical pyramid.

China is still a predominantly rural country and the key figures in a decentralized pyramidal rural system of medical responsibility are farm workers who have been given basic medical training. They give simple medical treatment or advice but they also continue to do their former agricultural work. Their main duties are in health education and preventive medicine. Generally their training program consists of a basic 3 month course at the commune or county hospital followed by periods of further training of 1 to 3 months in later years and augmented by teaching from mobile health teams or urban doctors who visit the rural areas. Commune health care consists of health stations for production brigades and a commune hospital which offers a fairly wide range of treatments for common or recurrent disorders staffed by medical specialists. Medical problems too complex for commune hospital staff are referred to the county hospital. There are more than 2000 counties in China each of which has a hospital ranging in size between 100 and 300 beds. The medical pyramid provides not just a hierarchy of specialization of treatment but also a hierarchy of medical training. The rural health workers and their urban counterparts--the factory health workers at the bottom have only a rudimentary education; the commune hospital staff roughly parallel general practitioners and the specialists at the top have undergone extensive training. The traditional physicians responsible for a vast amount of primary care provide China with many doctors with no ambition for urban practice. This situation may change however as fewer recent medical school graduates have been educated in traditional medical colleges and may specialize.

Young Physicians' Knowledge of Venereal Disease

The National Commission on Venereal Disease was established by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in early 1971 and held its first meeting in April of that year. One of the aspects of venereal disease control which the Commission believed to need evaluation was education. The concern about education included the adequacy of the physician's knowledge of venereal disease and that of other health professionals and the general public. It is with the physician's knowledge of venereal disease that this report deals. Many of the Commission members stated the belief that the teaching of venereology in medical schools was no longer adequate. An informal inquiry among a number of teaching dermatologists supported this opinion. In order to establish some factual basis for assessing the adequacy of such knowledge among recent medical school graduates, it was decided to test a representative group. An opportunity for such testing existed at the

Osler and continuing education.

Letters and Comments1 December 1970Osler and Continuing EducationR. H. ROZENDALR. H. ROZENDALSearch for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-73-6-1042_2 SectionsAboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ExcerptTo the editor: I have just finished reading Dr. Gibson's review of McGovern and Roland'sWm. Osler: The Continuing Educationand would like to contribute my impressions of Osler as held by one fairly recent (1966) medical school graduate. I have not seen this book yet, but I have read and am readingAequanamitas, a book given to me by another physician just before I began medical school. It had been given to him by a pharmaceutical company on his graduation and was a gift of far greater value than the stethoscopes and medical bags that this same company gave... This content is PDF only. To continue reading please click on the PDF icon. Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: LCDR (MC) USN Subase Dispensary, Pearl Harbor c/o FPO, San Francisco, Calif. 96610 PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Metrics 1 December 1970Volume 73, Issue 6Page: 1042-1042KeywordsContinuing medical educationGraduate medical education ePublished: 1 December 2008 Issue Published: 1 December 1970 PDF downloadLoading ...

Symptoms and Signs in Clinical Medicine.

Only a glance through this book with its 390 splendid illustrations (40 in color) and its fine text shows that it is a most useful contribution. Actually, it is a remarkable course in diagnosis with the eyes; if well studied, it would almost convert a recent medical school graduate into a good diagnostician. The reviewer has never seen anything to equal it. No wonder since starting out with the first issue in 1936, it is now in its eighth edition. This book is particularly welcome today when so much of diagnosis has become a study of laboratory reports and radiographs. Here is a text that will teach a young physician how to make scores of diagnoses just from careful observation of the patient. And yet Chamberlain and Ogilvie do not disregard the great value of electrocardiograms, radiographs, and laboratory determinations. In figure 89, one sees the typical anxious face and

Rational responses to graduate education of physicians

My role in this program is clearly limited to a discussion of the report of the Millis Commission on Graduate Education (except that section on family practice) and specifically to present what might be a reasonable response to a study and its recommendations, which if followed, would alter greatly our present concept of education beyond medical school and would require drastic changes in its overall structure. I begin with the assumption that those responsibile for education at this level recognize a need for and welcome a study in depth of graduate education, hopeful that from a better understanding of its weaknesses as well as its strength will come more coordinated and efficient educational opportunities for all of the recent medical school graduates. Before proceeding to the report itself, I would like to comment briefly on the commission which developed it. There are undoubtedly many who believe that those selected to

Rational Responses to Graduate Education of Physicians

My role in this program is clearly limited to a discussion of the report of the Millis Commission on Graduate Education (except that section on family practice) and specifically to present what might be a reasonable response to a study and its recommendations, which if followed, would alter greatly our present concept of education beyond medical school and would require drastic changes in its overall structure. I begin with the assumption that those responsibile for education at this level recognize a need for and welcome a study in depth of graduate education, hopeful that from a better understanding of its weaknesses as well as its strength will come more coordinated and efficient educational opportunities for all of the recent medical school graduates. Before proceeding to the report itself, I would like to comment briefly on the commission which developed it. There are undoubtedly many who believe that those selected to