Future medical education: Preparing, priorities, possibilities

Abstract

Introduction: As educators who are guiding the preparation of future health professionals, we must do what we can to recognize and meet the needs of those our graduates will serve. Fulfilling that goal depends on our responding to relevant changes in society and to evolving understanding of learning processes.

Preparing: To have educational programs that evolve appropriately when preparing learners for the future, we too must evolve. We need to prepare by recognizing shifts in population health and other societal trends that bring implications for the kinds of clinicians needed. External trends can require changes in our thinking and practices so that we reform any outdated educational traditions.

Priorities: Societal changes relevant to medical education and health care are happening so rapidly that we need to select from existing trends those that are most pressing and impactful. As we set our priorities, we need to understand the process of facilitating lasting changes in people and institutions.

Possibilities: In addition to responding to the changes that are arriving, we need to be initiating additional changes. Here, I suggest some reforms needed in health professions education, if our students are to become the clinicians that their future patients deserve.

Acknowledgments

The author specially thanks Larry Green, Kamila Hawthorne, Jacob Jacobson, Thomas Reeves, Trudie Roberts, and Jane Westberg for their helpful advice that improved earlier versions of this work.

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the writing of this article and has received no financial support for this work.

Notes on contributor

Hilliard Jason, MD, EdD, is a Co-founder and the Director, Academic Affairs, http://iMedtrust.org (a registered educational charity in England and Wales), and a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine, University of Colorado. He has held professorships at five USA medical schools, was Founding Director of the Division of Faculty Development at the AAMC, and was responsible for the two largest studies of medical teaching ever done.

Notes

1 See also: iMedtrust.org http://iMedtrust.org

2 "Non-communicable diseases are now the leading cause of death around the world, with developing countries hit hardest." (WHO 2018).

3 In some current programs, implementation of some “Process” and “Content” falls between the continuum end points suggested by the “past” and “future” descriptions in this table.

4 See, also, http://imedtrust.org/adaptive-medical-education/.

5 As IBM’s Deep Blue did when it learned to be so good at the game of chess that it beat the world champion, Gary Kasparov. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov.