Educational programs in US medical schools, 1999-2000

We used data from the 1999-2000 Liaison Committee on Medical Education Annu al Medical School Questionnaire, which had a 100% response rate, and other sources to describe the status of medical education programs in the United States, In 1999-2000, the number of fell-time faculty members was 102446, a 4.3% increase from 1998-1999, The number of basic science faculty increase d by less than 0.5%, while the number of clinical faculty increased by abou t 5%. There were 38 529 medical school applicants in 1999, a 6% decrease fr om 1998, Women constituted 45.8% and underrepresented minorities made up 12 .1% of the 1999-2000 first-year class. New content, such as alternative med icine and cultural competence, and new methods of instruction, such as comp uter-based learning, are being incorporated by many schools, Seventy school s (56% of the total) require students to pass both Step 1 and Step 2 of the US Medical Licensing Examination for advancement or graduation, an increas e from 62 schools (50%) in 1998-1999. The use of standardized methods of as sessment, such as objective structured clinical examinations, to evaluate s tudents' clinical performance was highly variable among schools.