PEDIATRICS Vol. 55 No. 1 January 1975, pp. 109-113
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Pediatric Education—For What?

Abraham B. Bergman M.D.1

1 Children's Orthopedic Hospital and Medical Center, and Department of Pediatrics and Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle

I am at the midpoint of my medical career; about ten years getting trained to be a pediatrician, and about ten years supposedly training others to be pediatricians. And though the worm's eye perspective is probably the worst, I would like to examine the past 20 years of medical education, and then try to take a look at where we're heading. I will speak mostly of pediatric education because it is what I know best.

I entered pediatrics when the subspecialties were bursting forth into full bloom. The diagnostic and therapeutic tools used by the cardiologists, hematologists, endocrinologists and others have profoundly improved the care of sick children. Where the unique talent of all pediatricians used to be applied to care of the newborn, now few of us "generalists" dare enter the sanctum of flashing lights, clicking machines, and hissing vapors. By the time I entered pediatrics, at least lip service was paid to the notion that children had minds and souls as well as bodies, and that they came from families and communities. Pioneers like Ben Spock, Milton Senn, and a few others in this country had fought hard to establish psychosocial pediatrics; physicians of my generation, if not families, reap the fruits of their efforts.

Another change that I witnessed was the growth of full-time faculties to teach clinical medicine—basic science teachers had, of course, come in long before. Where previously the bulk of clinical teaching was performed by practitioners who had to make a living seeing private patients, I was trained mostly by physicians who were paid to do so—or so I thought.

Submitted on March 14, 1974
Accepted on May 13, 1974




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