What is the purpose of medical education?

There is an engaging article in the recent issue of medical education [MEDICAL EDUCATION 2013; 47: 942–949]. It’s actually an email dialogue between  Dr David Hirsh and Professor Paul Worley. They attempt to address three important questions; Who are medical schools for? What is medical education for? What is the telos (the ultimate aim) of medical education? There is a lot of rich material in the exchange and I can’t do it proper justice here, but I will select out the elements that I liked best:

1.    The goals and purpose of medical education should be community engaged. Thus, communities should be co-creators of the curriculum and its delivery.

2.    There is a need to move beyond student-centeredness in medical education.

3.    The article highlights Cuba and the Barrio Adentro programme in Venezuela as exemplars of community engagement, and suggests that such models could fuel discovery and innovation.

4.    The final line of the paper is quotable; “The systemic result is that the goal of transforming medical education to repair society may actually transform us!”

These are just four parts that I liked; the paper is definitely worth a read. It’s rare that we see a paper exploring the values needed in medical education