Our Medical Colleges: A Reflection On The Past, Present and Future

Abstract

“The medical student’s present education is badly fragmented because his professors are not teaching him clinical medicine as should be taught – mainly because they themselves are not usually clinical doctors” Dr. J. Knowles. “Medical Professors poorer and less experienced in the art of healing – producing doctors in their deficient image” -Dr. John Knowles, General Director of Massachusetts General Hospital “The Goals of medical schools are, in a sense, a three-legged stool in which teaching, research and patient care form the necessary support. Unfortunately, recently most modern medical school have had a hypertrophy (overgrowth) of the research leg, stimulated by the trophic effect of the over-abundant sums of money in the form of research grants…. The full-time clinical professor has become primarily a research professor whose chief claim to fame is his ‘grantsmanship” and whose hallmark is ‘publish or perish’ “. Some professors are fundamentally lacking interest in teaching clinical medicine to medical students.” Willis E Brown, University of Arkansas Medical Center.