THE EVOLUTION OF COURSES IN PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR MEDICAL-STUDENTS

A number of medical schools substantially revised their curricula in r esponse to the GPEP Report, issued by the Association of American Medi cal Colleges in 1984. One of the most important areas of change has be en in the way students are introduced to the professional skills and p erspectives they will need to practice clinical medicine. A number of schools have recently developed interdisciplinary courses to accomplis h this goal. Such courses may differ in scheduling, format, and focus, bur they share a commitment to broadening skills and perspectives thr ough experiential learning and small-group work. Most of these courses span the entire first two years of the curriculum, and some extend in to the third and fourth years, blurring the line between the ''preclin ical'' and ''clinical'' years. The near simultaneous, largely independ ent introduction of major courses of this type into the curricula of s ome medical schools has gone largely unreported in the literature. Thi s overview article discusses the origins of these courses and reviews the scope of the curricula now in place. Among the most comprehensive programs are those at Northwestern University, Oregon Health Sciences University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Univers ity of Nebraska, each of which is described and discussed in the follo wing papers.