1. Universities should discourage too early
specialization at school. Through the entrance requirements to
their medical schools they should encourage a broader school
education for prospective doctors.
2. More research is needed into the criteria
for selection of medical students.
3. There is a need for more medical students.
Provision should be made for them in new medical schools as well as
by the increase in size of existing schools.
4. The present undergraduate course should be
shortened by six months.
5. The undergraduate and graduate
(pre-registration) periods should be common to all doctors and
should provide a basic education in medicine. The education of
practising doctors and medical scientists should not diverge before
registration.
6. Control of the whole undergraduate
curriculum should be firmly in the hands of a curriculum committee
or a department of medical education.
7. Undergraduates should be presented with a
balanced view of the problems of health and disease, including
teaching beyond the confines of the teaching hospital.
The teaching and research programme of a
medical school should clearly reflect the patterns of health and
disease and the current problems of medical care in the community
it serves. It should not merely reflect the research interests of
those who happen to teach.
8. Medical schools should devote some of their
energies to active research into the problems, both professional
and administrative, which arise in providing optimum medical care
in a political, socio- economic environment which is undergoing
continual change.
9. General practice must find a place in every
university medical school through the creation of academic
departments. A department will be concerned with undergraduate
education, postgraduate training, research and the provision of
medical care. It should preferably be autonomous within the medical
school.
10. General practitioners require special
vocational training for their role. This must be organized urgently
on a national scale. Money from central funds is
required.
11. The demonstration of general practice to
students and the teaching of young general practitioners requires
the selection, training and supervision of 1,000 general
practitioner teachers.
12. All district hospitals should have
responsibility for the special vocational training and continuing
postgraduate education of general practitioners. For these purposes
regional hospital boards and teaching hospitals must work closely
together. A regional organisation is needed.