Reviewing the residency system

Let Me Heal. The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine

We usually emphasize the level of resources when we assess the results of our health system. Institutions matter, we already know that. And if there is one key success factor in our healthcare is the physician's residency program. Training of the physicians under "real" conditions has allowed substantial improvements in health outcomes and the progress of medicine that are difficult to measure specifically. In a new book, Ludmerer provides an excellent review of what it represents to US healthcare:

At the core of the residency system are fundamental educational principles: the assumption of responsibility by residents in patient management, and the importance of providing residents sufficient time to reflect and pursue subjects in depth. Also at the core are the moral principles of residency training: thoroughness, attention to detail, and learning that the needs of patients should come first

And considers that

The current turmoil in health care delivery offers the profession and public the opportunity to redesign medical education and practice in ways that more fully serve the needs of patients, present and future.  The opportunity is there to envision medical education and practice as they should be, not as they are,  and to work toward achieving that end. Such opportunities are to be treasured, not feared. The country will always need good doctors, and the medical profession has little to fear in the changes ahead as long as it remembers that it exists to serve, that the needs of patients come before its own, and that it always must be thinking of improving the future as well as caring for the present.

This call for a redesign of medical education and practice is a real need in our environment. The confusion between the role of  "student" and "employee" is increasing and there is no effort to clarify it.The number of physicians in the program is determined without any clear estimation of demand and rules. A total mess. That's why I consider that we should rethink it from its foundations.

PS. Must see. Documentary: Big Data, citizens under scrutiny.