Letter to the Editor: The Reform of Medical Education

The accelerating growth of medically relevant knowledge and technology must be welcomed but it is also important to recognise that it has created very serious problems in the domain of medical education since prospective physicians are required to absorb an ever increasing amount of information. This is especially true when students study the basic medical sciences during the first half of their degree program. Almost every science discipline has some application in medicine so that the medical curriculum requires students to have had a good grounding in subjects such as Physics, Chemistry and Biology so that they can cope with the teaching offered by Medical Faculty Departments such as Biochemistry, Microbiology, Physiology and Pharmacology as well as that offered by the long established Departments such as Anatomy and Surgery.