Schools of doctors' dreams

E B Peile, general practioner a, G P Easton, broadcaster b, S Olney, general practitioner c.
a Aston Clinton Surgery, Alesury HP22 5LB, b Science Department, BBC Radio Science Unit,, c The Surgery, 1 Glebe Road, London SW13 0DR

We asked three people with an interest in education to speculate on what a medical school of the future might look like. Here Ed Peile and colleagues describe their Renaissance School; then Jeremy Anderson (p 1456) and Cindy Lam (p 1458) outline their visions.
The Renaissance School will produce broadly educated doctors who think in terms of patients rather than organs and are strong, multiprofessional team players.
The irresistible swing towards medical specialisation has brought advantages for patients, but arguably it has gone too far.1 As Horder puts it, "people are whole units who go wrong as a whole, and do not take kindly to being divided into organ systems."2 Now more than ever, patients need generalist doctors who can put their individual problems in context and provide continuity.

The return of the generalist
In the Renaissance School of General Medicine students will learn only what they need to learn to be supremely effective generalists. From day one the focus of the course will be on "whole patient medicine," which is to be based on holistic consultations with patients in their real contexts.3 There will be no preclinical-clinical divide, and gone will be the days of freestanding courses in biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy. The modular nature of the course will provide a common pathway to careers across the whole spectrum of the health professionfrom medicine and nursing to management and health promotion. Having learnt together as students in a range of disciplines, our graduates will be well equipped to learn both with and from each other and to continue lifelong interprofessional learning.4

Key features of the Renaissance course
Focus on medical generalism in hospital and community
Common course with different exit points for allied health professionals as well as doctors
Learning that is based on problems in real patients from day one
Lay public involved in selection, assessment, and teaching of students
Encounters with patients organised through general practices, community based learning centres attached to practices, general hospital clinics, the internet, and patient partners (patients trained to help train doctors)
Hand held computers to help in assessment of students and self directed learning
Rolling programme of workshops and tutorials

More information see link below :
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7327/1454