Medicine in the twenty-first century will be very different from the medicine of today; scientific, technological, economic, and ethical conditions of practice will be transformed. What do these changes portend for medical education? What knowledge should all medical students acquire? How can medical educators prepare students in the most cost-effective way?

This book describes efforts made at Harvard Medical School during the past to reorient general medical education. Harvard’s New Pathway has received national attention since its inception—including a multipart special on PBS’s Nova—because it offers a radical restructuring of the traditional medical school curriculum. Its creators, most of them contributors to this book, designed a program that gives students not only a core of scientific, biomedical, and clinical knowledge but also the skills, tools, and attitudes that will enable them to become lifelong learners, to cope with and use new information, and—most important—to provide better patient care.

New Pathways to Medical Education also tells the inside story of how a traditional and research-oriented faculty was persuaded to cooperate with colleagues outside their departments in adopting a student-centered, problem-based approach to learning. Central to this transformation was the Patient–Doctor course, which the book describes in detail. This course—which teaches students to LISC the patient–doctor relationship for the benefit of patients—is considered one of the most significant contributions to medical education in the New Pathway.

New Pathways to Medical Education will inspire physicians, medical scientists, and medical educators around the world to think and act more decisively to reform medical education. And because it documents the development of an innovative curriculum, this study will interest educators in all fields.

This book describes and contrasts various psychiatric teaching programs in medical schools. After an examination of the differing and frequently unsatisfactory states of these programs, it also proposes a comprehensive plan for the future.

In preparing this study the author visited numerous medical schools, observing a wide range of teaching methods, goals, and facilities. His aim here is fourfold: to describe and compare existing medical school psychiatry programs in detail; to illustrate by example and anecdote the relation of teachers and students to these programs; to construct a synthesis of existing psychiatry programs that will offer optimum training and to outline a new program based on this synthesis and some additional proposals; and finally to show how methodology is a crucial but as yet unappreciated part of many psychiatry programs.

Dr. Werkman attempts to be a reporter in depth to his psychiatric colleagues about new and important developments in modern psychiatric teaching. The great scope and variety which the field of psychiatry has acquired since the Second World War has often meant that psychiatrists know little in detail of what their colleagues are doing. The author finds as well that there is often a lack of communication both within a single department and between departments in different medical schools, and that the attitude of many non-psychiatrists on the faculties ranges from ignorance to hostility--an attitude often reflected by the students.

“In recent decades, the deficiencies of our system of medical education and medical care have become clearer and more comprehensible to an expanding and highly vocal segment of the public. Many educators share the uneasiness and recognize the need for change.” These words from Dr. John Knowles's Preface define the context of this collection of thought-provoking essays, originally presented in 1966 as a series of lectures sponsored jointly by the Lowell Institute of Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Written by seven men distinguished in the fields of medicine, education, and government, they are addressed to everyone, expert and layman alike, concerned with the quality of medical care in the United States. The ultimate aim of medicine is to enhance the quality of life by the prevention of disease and the comprehensive care of the sick. Technological advances continually provide us with new and better tools, but medicine is plagued by rising costs, inefficient use of facilities and personnel, and critical shortages of manpower. Each author, from his particular point of view, recognizes the need to bring medicine into contact with the social sciences, and presents concrete proposals for government aid and curriculum reform.