AN EXPERIMENT IN MAKING THE HOSPITAL A GRADUATE MEDICAL CENTER

Abstract
During the past 20 years undergraduate medical education has in general shown notable improvement. The modern medical student receives four years of quality instruction. Graduate education (internship and residency) has also shown improvement but not to the same proportional degree nor so universally as the undergraduate period. In the postgraduate period, educational techniques are not well standardized, and they vary greatly in their effectiveness and probably even more so in the frequency with which physicians utilize them. Basically, undergraduate medical education consists of two components: (1) acquisition of a minimal factual knowledge and technical skill and (2) acquisition of the spirit of service and dedication and the desire for continual selfimprovement. Examinations readily measure the first. Once past they give no assurance that the physician will continue to improve nor for that matter whether he might not regress. Too often they represent the last stimulus to improvement for some physicians.