Medical Professionalism: Lessons from the Holocaust

Abstract

The principal objective of medical educators is, and has always been, to prepare future physicians to meet the needs and expectations of the society they are pledged to serve. Today’s medical educators face many challenges in trying to meet that objective. In addition to ensuring that medical students and residents acquire the knowledge and skills required of competent clinicians, they also must deal with a host of novel issues raised by the complexities and turbulence of contemporary medical practice. Among those issues are:

• continued escalation in health care costs

• rapid advances in complex medical technologies

• explosion of scientific knowledge

• wide racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care

• large gaps in the quality of health care service

• widespread concern about patient safety

• inequities in access to health care services

• unexplained variations in patterns of practice