Academic Medicine Celebrates Flexner Report Centenary

The year 2010 marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of the Flexner Report (Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), Abraham Flexner’s seminal critical assessment of standards and practices in medical education. Flexner’s report led to widespread reform and laid much of the groundwork for health professions education today. To both celebrate the centenary of the Flexner Report and examine its influence on contemporary theory and practice, Academic Medicine has devoted its February 2010 issue to the report’s legacy—the successes it has engendered, its relevance today, and the challenges yet to be overcome. In a broader sense, the issue seeks to look back at health professions education’s past in an effort to see its future. As Dr. Richard B. Gunderman explains in his Foreword to the issue, an “overarching theme in this collection is the creative tension between continuity and change. To be faithful to the spirit of Flexner’s work, we must not only re-examine the questions he presented but also pose new ones that he could not have foreseen. These articles invite us to ponder both types of questions.”

Included in the special issue are two articles authored by FAIMER staff and Fellows (to view the abstract for each article, click on its title):

“Relevance of the Flexner Report to Contemporary Medical Education in South Asia”
Zubair Amin, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
William P. Burdick, FAIMER Associate Vice President for Education and Co-Director of the FAIMER Institute
Avinash Supe (PHIL 2002), Director of the GSMC-FAIMER Regional Institute
Tejinder Singh (PHIL 2003), Director of the CMCL-FAIMER Regional Institute

“Flexner’s Global Influence: Medical Education Accreditation in Countries that Train Physicians Who Pursue Residency in the United States”
Marta van Zanten, FAIMER Research Associate
John R. Boulet, FAIMER Associate Vice President for Research and Data Resources
Frank Simon, FAIMER Senior Scholar