Abstract
THE report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools, of which Sir William Goodenough is chairman, is summarized on p. 322 of this issue. The report itself must be read if the Committee's recommendations are to be fully understood. Some of them involve considerable changes in outlook and teaching in both the schools and universities of Britain; others profoundly concern the general public; yet others will hearten the reader and lead his thought beyond the technical details of medical education. For medical work must always be closely bound up with the structure and work of society, and the medical practitioner has to play an important part in social evolution. Any serious consideration of his training must therefore be just what this report is—a sociological as well as a medical document. Several of the reforms which it proposes are similar to, if not identical with, the reforms recently suggested by the Planning Committee of the Royal College of Physicians (which were summarized in the Lancet, 607; May 6, 1944, and the British Medical Journal, 668; May 13, 1944), so that the views of these two committees can be considered together. In both, the inevitable interaction between scientific method and the older ideal of the art of medicine is evident, and both reports seek to preserve the best elements of the two methods of approach to the patient. Both emphasize the future need to ensure the maintenance of health rather than to await the onset of disease.
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Medical Education in Great Britain. Nature 154, 315–318 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154315a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154315a0