Biomedicineʼs failure to achieve Flexnerian standards of education

The central principle of medical education advocated by Flexner was mastery of the scientific method and its application to all dimensions of medicine, whether the bench laboratory, the bedside, or the social arena. Not Flexner but the biomedical model has been responsible for curricular designs that have under stressed the application of the scientific method to clinical data and the more person-oriented, psychosocial dimensions of illness and patient care. Flexnerian standards of medical education have yet to be achieved.