title: The perils of medical education.
abstract: Medicine and medical education have always faced the uncomfortable necessity of making decisions on the basis of incomplete information. In recent years far more intense social pressures have been added. Some of these are technical and theoretically can be solved logically, for example, equitable financing of medical care and education. However, some of the pressures have their roots in a more general malaise, the loss of philosophical faith and trust in our institutions. The task of the medical educator is to encourage rational changes, but to resist irrational ones. Medicine at its best is in itself for those in this and related professions, at least, a partial response to the abiding human need to feel fulfillment in an altruistic cause.
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine; D010684:Philosophy; D011639:Public Opinion; D014481:United States