The Objectives of Medical Education

IF ONE considers what the majority of the graduates of our medical schools do in their professional lives, the answer is, of course, that which is termed "general practice." Therefore, the objective of a medical education, it is customarily assumed, is that which will develop the best general practitioner. Of course, the qualities required of him are well recognized, but their relative importance may be a matter for argument; certainly the effectiveness of education upon certain of these is, to a considerable degree, still a matter of opinion. The quality which every one would place first is that of integrity, both in the usual sense of honesty and also in the broader implications of its Latin derivation, of "wholeness and uprightness." It would also be agreed that this is a peculiarly desirable objective, whatever activity the physician might undertake in subsequent life. That which medical education can do about this on the positive side is, however, all too little. The student in the school of medicine is an adult, contrary to common opinion, and particularly so in respect to the underlying qualities of behavior and conduct. He has already been heavily conditioned by his environment in family, school, and college during those plastic and formative years when these qualities are most readily molded. In a negative sense and indirectly the school can do something by culling out at the start those who are obviously dishonest and by restricting admissions to those men whose primary interest in medicine is an intellectual one rather than one of advancement in a social or financial way.