Thoughts on Learning and Teaching in the First Two Years of the Medical Curriculum

摘要

Suggestions for improvement of the educational program in the first two years of the medical curriculum are made in the light of simultaneous experiences as teacher and student. The learning needs of the student should be given more consideration. Many of the present learning-teaching problems could be solved by closer communication and collaboration between instructors teaching the same students coupled to an official recognition of the value of good teaching. In spite of a multiplicity of courses and basic science departments, the student is a single person with a rather limited goal. He is required to learn and remember a vast amount of detailed factual information during his first two years of the medical curriculum. The medical student should be reinstated as an integral human component of the structure and functioning of each department. This is a difficult task because the dual functions of research in a specialized discipline and undergraduate medical teaching frequently pull an individual's or department's activities in opposite directions and lead to administrative problems.