New Pathways to Medical Education

Medicine in the twentyfirst century will be very different from the medicine of today's scientific, technological, economic, and ethical conditions of practice will be transformed. What do these changes portend for medical education? Whatknowledge should all medical students acquire? How can medical educators pre-pare students in the most costeffective way?This book describes efforts made at Harvard Medical School during the pastto reorient general medical education. Harvard's New Pathway has received national attention since its inception-including a multipart special onPBSrs"s Nova-because it offers a radical restructuring of the traditional medicalschool curriculum. Its creators, most of them contributors to this book, designeda 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 tobecome lifelong learners, to cope with and use new information, and-mostimportant-to provide better patient care.New Pathways to Medical Education also tells the inside story of how a traditional and researchoriented faculty was persuaded to cooperate with colleaguesoutside their departments in adopting a studentcentered, problembasedapproach to learning. Central to this transformation was the PatientDoctorcourse, which the book describes in detail. This course-which teaches studentsto LISC the patientdoctor relationship for the benefit of patients-is consideredone 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 toreform medical education. And because it documents the development of an innovative curriculum, this study will interest educators in all fields.