A Novel Call to Fix Medical Education: Pragmatic Steps to Encourage Dialogue and Advocacy for Providers and Medical Students

Abstract

Medical education in both undergraduate and graduate institutions has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s. Indeed, the demographics of providers have diversified accordingly to that of society's shifting sociocultural perspectives, this heightened transformation to represent women and minority populations have contrastingly not gained similar traction in medical education as the need for incorporating student creativity and humanities coursework in the training process of medical school. To adequately address the stagnant acceptance of liberal arts and humanities coursework for future physicians, it is critical to begin with restructuring the larger framework of medical education. More specifically, by increasing student participation in reflective and administrative discussions, and allowing trainees to be encouraged rather than hindered from creative modalities of their training. These initial systemic changes will provide the needed environment to allow providers to honestly discuss not only the humanities as a means of enriching physician as healers prating the art of medicine, but just as important, transforming the community to accept creative ideologies fosters a more refined means of supporting the future healers in our communities.