Education Matters

Academic medicine is like a tripod, standing on three legs. One leg is patient care, one is research, and one is education. Over the course of the twentieth century, the emphasis placed on each of these missions changed. In recent years, education has become the short leg of the tripod.More and more attention and resources have been devoted to patient care and research, and education has languished. This is a dangerous situation, in part because it threatens to destabilize both medicine and the healthcare system. If the profession of medicine and the healthcare of our society are to flourish, we need well-educated physicians.