Medical Education Then and Now

Excerpt

It is said that half of what you learn in medical school is not true 10 years later, but you are not sure at the time which half. This aphorism conveys both the uncertainty and the rapidly evolving nature of medical knowledge. It also conveys some of the inherent futility of the traditional approach to medical education that consisted largely of memorizing a massive quantity of information and demonstrating mastery by making the correct selection on a multiple-choice examination. That is how most of the current generation of physicians were trained. Luckily, this ineffective and illogical approach to teaching and assessment is gradually becoming a vestige of the past. …