This paper titled, Unmet Needs, outlines a number of fundamental flaws in the present medical education system.
I have commented in presentations,in articles,and now in a book the Lean enterprise Institute will publish in June that the shame and blame culture instilled in our medical schools is our biggest barrier to patient care improvement. This paper by the Patient Safety Institute clearly outlines the problem and makes suggested changes regarding medical education.
For example, the fact that professors of medicine are allowed to berate,belittle, and attack medical students in public forums is appalling. It is fundamentally disrespectful and it fosters ill will and a culture of hiding mistakes. We all have our stories of this behavior manifested in our teachers. How many of us had teachers that encouraged us to discuss our mistakes or taught us how to solve a problem or root cause an error. In 4 years of medical school it never happened once to me.
In order to revolutionize the industry we must destroy the shame and blame culture, we must learn pdsa (plan do study act) problem solving and we must learn how to follow and audit the standard work that emerges from pdsa. In my experience there are no full time faculty in medical schools competent to teach any of this. Lucian Leape is absolutely right in his analysis of the gigantic gap in medical education.In fact this may actually be one of the root causes of the entire healthcare cost and quality crisis. LLI-Unmet-Needs-Report
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