The Flexner Report of 1910 transformed the nature and process of medical education in America with a resulting elimination of proprietary schools and the establishment of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training. This transformation occurred in the aftermath of the report, which embraced scientific knowledge and its advancement as the defining ethos of a modern physician.
Why is the Flexner Report important?
The Flexner Report is the most important event in the history of American and Canadian medical education. It was a commentary on the condition of medical education in the early 1900s and gave rise to modern medical education. The report is named for Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) who prepared it.
What did the Flexner Report of 1910 do?
The 1910 Flexner Report examined medical education and suggested reform for medical colleges, which included increasing standards, partnering with hospitals for clinical training, and closing schools that could not afford to update and maintain facilities.
How did the Flexner Report change medical education?
The Flexner Report drastically changed medical education, especially for African American physicians. Flexner recommended coeducation of men and women in medical schools, but believed that Black physicians should be trained to serve Black communities. Prior to the report, there were over 20 Black medical schools in the Unites States.
What is the Flexner study?
In the early 1900s, the Carnegie Foundation and the American Medical Association tasked Abraham Flexner, an education specialist, with traveling to all 155 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada to assess the state of medical education.
What was the impact of the Flexner Report on the medical training of black physicians?
But in practice, the Flexner Report all but eliminated medical education for African-Americans, primarily because the American Medical Association used the report to advance an agenda that protected the professional and financial interests of their (white, male) membership.
What was the goal of the Flexner Report?
The 1910 Flexner Report examined medical education and suggested reform for medical colleges, which included increasing standards, partnering with hospitals for clinical training, and closing schools that could not afford to update and maintain facilities.
What is Abraham Flexner best known for?
Abraham Flexner (November 13, 1866 – September 21, 1959) was an American educator, best known for his role in the 20th century reform of medical and higher education in the United States and Canada. Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
What was the primary effect of the Flexner Report quizlet?
One of the most important outcomes of Flexner's report was... That it stimulated support for medical education from foundations and wealthy individuals. Schools that received the most favorable ratings from Flexner shared most of the money.
What happened after the Flexner report?
Mediated through the commissions of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and its Carnegie Foundation Washington, D C Office, Flexner's Report subsequently led to shutting down the majority of CAM-oriented colleges and programs (e.g., medical schools, homoeopathic colleges, and some psychiatric ...
What did Abraham Flexner say about social work?
Flexner (1915) asserted that social work could not be considered a profession because it lacked (1) the decision-making authority in the critical thinking process, (2) a definite purpose, and (3) a purposefully organized educational discipline.
What did the Flexner report emphasize as the cornerstone of medical education?
Since the reforms in medical education prompted by the Flexner report, one of the cornerstones of medical education has been literacy in research methods and statistics, as well as careful review of scientific literature (Cooke et al., 2006).
What areas of healthcare did the Flexner report cover?
Reduce the number of medical schools (from 155 to 31) and the number of poorly trained physicians; Increase the prerequisites to enter medical training; Train physicians to practice in a scientific manner and engage medical faculty in research; Give medical schools control of clinical instruction in hospitals.
What is the Flexner model?
Flexner believed that all education should be utilitarian and should prepare the individual for the responsibilities of citizenship and for an occupation or a profession. He also believed that general education lasted too long in this country.
What is Flexner's criteria?
According to Flexner, a profession must have a clear practical aim; the professional's intellect, drawing upon knowledge, is purposely employed to an end (whether it be the promotion of health or the creation of buildings, in the cases of physicians and architects, respectively).
What was the purpose of the Flexner Report?
The Flexner Report set American medicine on a course that was fueled by the energy of scientific discovery. Those discoveries have immeasurably improved the lives of all human beings, and it is difficult to cavil in the face of such accomplishments. But the oversights of Flexner and his associates need not have occurred if these leaders had recognized the primary role of physicians as beneficent healers; the delicate balance of patient care and research could have been pursued with mutual benefits for both sides. As it was, the science of medicine eclipsed the active witnessing of our patients. Edmund Pellegrino’s lament was proven true that doctors had become neutered technicians with patients in the service of science rather than science in the service of patients. How else to explain the seemingly unexplainable Tuskegee experiments, the Henrietta Lacks tissue culture tragedy, the many occurrences in which the physician as scientist has taken precedence over the physician as healer. But this lesion is not restricted to situations in which patients are used as experimental subjects ― it pervades the fashion in which so much of medicine was taught and practiced in the last century. This lapse has not escaped our patient population nor our critics who have richly documented the poverty of professional ideals now current in medicine. They have called for a new Flexner Report, a centennial taking stock, to address the shortcomings in medical education that have occurred in the aftermath of the original report. Dr Tom Inui, an internist and medical educator, was enlisted by the AMA to spend a year in this investigation [14]; Molly Cooke and her associates undertook the same task for the AMA and performed a mini-version of the Flexner initiative by visiting 10 medical schools throughout America [15]. Everyone is a proponent of what is now happening in many medical schools. Major emphasis is being placed upon the professional formation of students and specific core competencies. Practice-based learning, a Flexner initiative, is supplemented by courses in patient communication, medical ethics, and medical humanities. Departments of medical education are now part of medical faculties that train their members to incorporate these ideals into their courses. The coming century has received a bounteous richness of medical accomplishments thanks to Flexner; a system of education that was conceived more than a century ago still remains a vibrant system. There is in place an edifice that is the envy of the entire world, but it is a structure that has required a re-molding in light of its too-narrow focus. The original Hopkins edifice has been rebalanced in the last 10 years following the revisions in the medical curriculum that recent re-evaluations have called for.
What was the result of the Flexner Report of 1910?
The Flexner Report of 1910 transformed the nature and process of medical education in America with a resulting elimination of proprietary schools and the establishment of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training . This transformation occurred in the aftermath of the report, which embraced scientific knowledge ...
What did Abraham Flexner do in his career?
The success of the school and money obtained from its subsequent sale were Flexner’s ticket out of Louisville; in the next few years, he pursued an MPhil at Harvard in philosophy and journeyed to Europe, where he visited schools in Great Britain, France, and, particularly, Germany. His continental seasoning was focused upon university medical education in these countries, paralleling the then common practice of young American physicians in completing their medical studies abroad. It was out of his practical experience as an educator in America and his exploration of pedagogical strategies in Europe that he distilled his critiques of and correctives for American schooling in his book, The American College. Flexner and his expertise came to the attention of Henry Pritchett, head of the Carnegie Foundation, upon reading The American College. At the time, the Foundation had identified improvement of health care in America as the primary focus of its philanthropic concern. To achieve this purpose, the foundation members correctly surmised that improvement in the very sorry state of medical schooling in America was necessary; they invited Abraham Flexner to survey the quality of medical schools throughout America and Canada and provide suggestions for their improvement.
What was the purpose of the Interurban Clinical Club?
The purpose of this organization was the exchanging of ideas and the nurturing of fellowship among medical professors in the leading Eastern medical schools. Its aims included several goals that Flexner’s conception of medical education also incorporated; scientific investigation of disease was promoted, and methods of teaching were to be shared and improved. The club was largely responsible for the development of the scientific base of American medicine. It was the springboard to eminence for department and divisional heads of the leading medical schools in America. These were the individuals who forged institutional philosophies and standards of excellence in medical schools throughout the next century. The era of the clinical scientist in America dates from this organization; its members were academic physicians who became the vital link between the practicing physician and the basic scientist. Flexner’s task was greatly facilitated by the coalescence of all of this energy invested in improving medical education in America.
When was Abraham Flexner published?
Abraham Flexner: an autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster; 1960. [Google Scholar]
Who wrote the report on medical education in Europe?
Flexner A. Medical Education in Europe: a report to the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching. New York: 1912. [Google Scholar]
Who was the German medical educator?
FLEXNER AND THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. Flexner prepared for his task by immersing himself in the literature of medical education, and he specifically identified Theodore Billroth’s book Medical Education in the German Universities[5] as his major primer.
When was the Flexner Report published?
After the Flexner Report was published in 1910, medicine and its specialties evolved relatively rapidly into the system we know today. In 1932, the Commission on Medical Education advised: “A particular identification for those who profess to be specialists should be created.”. As a result, a number of specialty boards were incorporated between ...
How did the Flexner report influence medical education?
Before that time, physicians largely relied on their bedside manner and relationships with patients to “treat” their illness. In the 1950s, an emphasis on physicians becoming proceduralists and interventionists placed importance on integrating clinical skills in medical education. Most recently, the awareness of the need to develop the skills to lead and be a member of a health care team has become the greatest influence on medical education. Our understanding of the levels of learning in medical education has evolved from informative (information and skills), to formative (socialization and values), and, finally, to transformative learning—placing an emphasis on leadership attributes and physicians as change-agents in complex health care systems (Lancet). Teaching and developing core competencies in collaborative care are now the drivers in health professions education. This includes teaching and defining values and ethics for interprofessional practice, roles and responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and elements of teams and teamwork [13].
What was the impact of the Flexner Report on medical education?
1 With a greater emphasis on scientific understanding and reasoning in medical practice, it soon followed that there would be physicians whose special expertise was in the application of those principles and rigor to the diagnosis and nonsurgical treatment of diseases in adults. Prior to this time, most physicians had been generalists in training and application.
Who is Benjamin Fine?
Benjamin Fine, an engineer-turned-radiologist who is an expert in improvement science and machine learning, authored this commentary on the concept of an AI-enabled health care manager to monitor real-time health system data to execute the best course of action., in Intelligence-Based Medicine, 2020.
Was the Flexner Report accepted?
Acceptance of the recommendations of the Flexner Report was not inevitable. In the early 1800s, and despite significant scientific and institutional advances, the profession of medicine and its system of instruction and licensing was weak, troubled, and generally ineffective.
What is the Flexner Report?
In this frenzy for the latest and greatest, the door was wide open for how new technology might improve our lives in every way. So why not also give our health over to science and technology and see if they can also improve and lengthen our lives?
When was the Flexner Report published?
In 1910 he published the book-length report Medical Education in the United States and Canada which is now known as the Flexner Report. And, the rest, as they say, is history.
What is the connection between the robber barons and medicine?
John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and others saw this as a progression of peddling pharmaceuticals, which began as byproducts of oil refinement.
Why did medical professionals leaned heavily toward natural healing pose the greatest threat to this standardization?
Medical professionals who leaned heavily toward natural healing posed the greatest threat to this standardization because they continued to demonstrate that nature has provided what’s necessary to treat or prevent just about any illness.
Who was Abraham Flexner?
1. Abraham Flexner was not a doctor, but a school teacher and educational theorist from Louisville, Kentucky. In 1910 he published the Medical Education in the United States and Canada, known as the Flexner Report, which elevated the importance of German educational methods in the teaching of medicine.
Who drew the connection between this and the need for an educational component?
Hans Ruesch also drew the connection between this and the need for an educational component, “So the stage was set for the ‘education’ of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media-makers.
Do doctors help fuel the pharmaceutical propaganda machine?
Obviously, there are plenty of highly trained doctors who aren’t interested in helping fuel the pharmaceutical propaganda machine, but there’s a system in place that virtually ensures that we take the bait.
What is the Flexner Report?
Flexner Report...Birth Of Modern Medical Education. The Flexner Report is the most important event in the history of American and Canadian medical education. It was a commentary on the condition of medical education in the early 1900s and gave rise to modern medical education.
Who was Abraham Flexner?
(Albert Einstein joined the Institute in 1933). Abraham Flexner was one of the great educators of the 20th century.
What was the name of the Carnegie Foundation report that triggered reforms in the standards, organization, and curriculum of North?
It is known today as the Flexner Report. The Flexner Report triggered much-needed reforms in the standards, organization, and curriculum of North American medical schools.
Was Abraham Flexner a doctor?
Abraham Flexner was not a doctor but was a secondary school teacher and principal for 19 years in Louisville, Kentucky (where this writer's uncle was one of his students). Flexner then took graduate work at Harvard and the University of Berlin and joined the research staff of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
How did the Flexner report affect the health care system?
The first is that medical education in the U.S. and Canada is to become standardized. This had both positive and negatives outcomes. At the time there were a lot medical schools around that had no clear regulations. For instance medical students did not need to be college graduates. So there were most likely students in medical school who should not have been there. Also many of the schools themselves did not have laboratories to teach the students about dissection. While these positive changes ensured that our future doctors would be well trained, they also made is much more expensive to attend medical school which in turn decreased the number of doctors available to treat patients.
Was Abraham Flexner a doctor?
Abraham Flexner was not a doctor but was a secondary school teacher and principal for 19 years in Louisville, Kentucky (where this writer's uncle was one of his students). Flexner then took graduate work at Harvard and the University of Berlin and joined the research staff of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For the Carnegie Foundation, Flexner researched, wrote and in 1910 published a report entitled "Medical Education in the United States and Canada." It is known today as….
What was the purpose of the Flexner Report?
His findings, published in 1910 in what is now known as the Flexner Report, provided criteria to standardize and improve medical schools, forcing closed many institutions that didn't have the resources to implement more rigorous instruction. By 1923, only 66 medical schools remained, and five of seven existing Black medical schools were closed.
What is Beyond Flexner Alliance?
In 2012, the Beyond Flexner Alliance was created to address some of the disparities established in 1910 that still exist today. As part of George Washington University, it collaborates with other professional organizations and hosts annual conferences at which physicians can develop tools for dismantling racism or other structural issues in health systems.
What does Harley see as an inflection point?
Harley sees the current coronavirus pandemic as an inflection point.
Which two schools survived the post-Flexner reforms?
Howard University and Meharry University, the two schools that survived the post-Flexner reforms, were then left to produce enough doctors to serve around 10 million African Americans living in the country at the time. The ripple effect of this disparity is evident today, Gasman said.
What was the early 20th century report that laid the framework for the modern North American medical school?
The early 20th century report that laid the framework for the modern North American medical school is also partially responsible for the disproportionately low number of Black physicians in the workforce today, historians and education specialists say. In the early 1900s, the Carnegie Foundation and the American Medical Association tasked Abraham ...
