Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era

Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care

Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA

Number Of Pages:514

Publication Date:1999-10-15

Sales Rank:734784

ISBN / ASIN:0195118375

EAN:9780195118377

Binding:Hardcover

Manufacturer:Oxford University Press, USA

Studio:Oxford University Press, USA

Average Rating:5

In this magisterial book, the eminent historian and medical educator Kenneth M. Ludmerer describes the evolution of American medical education. Ludmerer ranges from 1910, when a muck-raking report on medical diploma mills spurred the reform and expansion of medical schools, to the current era of managed care, when commercial interests once more have come to the fore, compromising the training of the nation's future doctors. He portrays the experience of learning medicine from the perspective of students, house officers, faculty, administrators, and patients, and he traces the immense impact on academic medical centers of outside factors such as World War II, the National Institutes of Health, private medical insurance, and Medicare and Medicaid. Most notably, the book explores the very real threats to medical education in the current environment of managed care, viewing these developments not as a catastrophe but as a challenge to make many long overdue changes in medical education and medical practice. Panoramic in scope, meticulously researched, brilliantly argued, and engagingly written, Time to Heal is both a stunning work of scholarship and a courageous critique of modern medical education. It provides an indispensable framework for making informed choices about the future of medical education and of health care in America. A stellar review of Kenneth Ludmerer's TIME TO HEAL will run in the New England Journal of Medicine in the November 1999 issue! Written by NEJM Editor Jerome Kassirer, the review praises the book as: "Mandatory reading for anyone even peripherally involved in medical education. . .We must not let the future (of medicine) happen, we must make it happen. Ludmerer's extraordinary book provides the foundation-- and inspiration--for doing this."