Selecting and Training Tomorrow’s Physicians –

A Clinical Ethics Perspective

(© Michelle Sahl 2000)

 

As we turn the corner on the start of the twenty-first century, health care industry journalists appear to have an enviable hold on their own job security.  Hardly a day goes by without one or another of the country’s major newspapers headlining yet another medical quagmire to caution consumers about.  Professional errors, fiduciary conflicts of interest, deteriorating credibility --- criticism once reserved for the hallow halls of prestigious law firms is now targeting the medical industry in rapid fire.  For the individual consumer, however, their faith in the health care system rests with their personal physician(s).  When a consumer becomes a patient, harboring fears, concerns and questions about their own well-being, they represent the vulnerable party in their relationship with their physician.  While today’s patients have retained at least a modicum of choice in selecting their personal physician, most are less informed about their practitioner’s route to becoming a physician than they are about their own feelings toward and about their physician.

 

In researching the factors comprising the process and outcomes of our current medical education system (which we, as taxpayers and health care consumers/patients, hold an important stake in), I identified three key questions on this topic:  [1] What are the important criteria in selecting and training physicians?  [2] How should we use those criteria in choosing the best candidates to be our future physicians?  and [3] How and what are today’s medical students being taught by the schools and universities of our medical education system?....