Foreword

This “Snapshot of Medical Student Education in the United States and Canada,” published as a supplement to the September 2010 issue of Academic Medicine, comes at an important time. It is the 100th anniversary of the release of the Flexner Report, and it has been 10 years since the publication of the first “Snapshot” in a supplement to the September 2000 issue of the journal. As such, this collection of reports has value for both contemporary readers and future historians. First, the reports are structured to facilitate comparison between the medical student education programs described in the present collection and those described in the 2000 collection, and also to compare the current programs with one another. Second, both this collection and the one published in 2000 are comprehensive. They include reports from almost every accredited medical education program leading to the MD degree in the United States and Canada. Third, the reports offer an important picture of advances, innovations, and initiatives in these medical student education programs that can help contemporary readers understand the status of medical student education today, and that can help current and future historians gauge progress over the last decade and century. Fourth, the reports reveal important similarities and differences among medical student education programs. For example, some schools have specially-designed experiences in research (often called “scholarly concentrations”), while other schools offer students key clinical experiences in rural settings. Some schools have traditional clerkships, while others have longitudinal ones. Several schools have added buildings devoted to medical student education, and many have integrated ethics into the curriculum as a required component. Many schools are expanding their educational programs to additional campuses, and new medical schools are establishing their own innovative educational programs. This set of reports provides ready access to this information. Fifth, the reports include information on the governance and management structure of educational programs, which situates the curriculum within the context of a school and provides key insights about how decisions are made. These reports are valuable to both established and new medical schools. Established schools must engage in a self-study process to prepare for accreditation every eight years. During the self-study, a school's faculty and students examine the structure and function of their school's medical student education program. These reports provide important benchmarks and reveal a range of ideas for faculty and students to consider as they evaluate their own program. The reports provide similar opportunities for new schools that seek to build new and innovative programs. So, put this supplement in a special place on your bookshelf, or bookmark the supplement's Web page—it will serve you well as you engage in curricular renewal, prepare for reaccreditation, or seek to understand your own curricular efforts in a broader perspective. I wish to thank Brownie Anderson for recognizing the importance of these reports, pursuing the development of this collection, and serving ably as its editor. Al Bradford's tireless and excellent work on the September 2000 supplement earned him an invitation to do it again ten years later. He responded admirably, and much credit for the quality of this report belongs to Al. Steven L. Kanter, MD

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