| Revision of the medical curriculum to satisfy today's needs is proposed. The author feels that the doctor's general training course, originally devised to make him proficient in almost all disciplines, is no longer relevant. The complexity of medical knowledge and techniques is such that it is impossible to train a doctor in depth for any one branch of medicine prior to the postgraduate stage. The answer to this predicament is to equip the intellectual armamentarium to meet life as he finds it. A suggested course curriculum would include: a preliminary year of general science; a 6-7-year medical course with an integrated core of biology, physiology, biochemistry, and medical physics; and b study of general surgery and medicine, with some instruction in obstetrics, psychology, preventive medicine, and public health. Such an education would enable the doctor to tackle, in a scientific manner, new, more subtle problems consequent on the rapid development of a technological society. Further suggestions include integrating the medical school with the university hospital, and revising the concept of medical training to accommodate the general practitioner, whose qualification would be completion 4-year bachelor degree programme in basic medical science. |