Since 1970 a medical sciences curriculum has been taught jointly by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1978, a doctoral program was founded to prepare physical scientists and engineers to address research at the interface of technology and clinical medicine. This volume describes, analyzes, and evaluates those first 25 years of the largest lasting collaborative educational and research program between two neighboring research universities.

Containing introductory comments by the presidents of both institutions at the time of the inauguration of the program, this volume presents historiographic and autobiographical chapters by senior officials and faculty of both universities who helped to guide it through its first quarter century. Evaluation of the program and follow-up data on the first graduates are included as well. Courses are listed in the appendices, as are curricula, faculty, theses topics, and major research projects.

One hundred years ago a series of seminal documents, starting with the Flexner Report of 1910, sparked an enormous burst of energy to harness the power of science to transform higher education in health. Professional education, however, has not been able to keep pace with the challenges of the 21st century. A new generation of reforms is needed to meet the demands of health systems in an interdependent world.

The report of the Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, a global independent initiative consisting of 20 leaders from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and institutional affiliations, articulates a fresh vision and recommends renewed actions. Building on a rich legacy of educational reforms during the past century, the Commission’s findings and recommendations adopt a global and multi-professional perspective using a systems approach to analyze education and health, with a focus on institutional and instructional reforms.

Burnout is common among doctors in the West, so one might assume that a medical career in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, would place far greater strain on the idealism that drives many doctors. But, as A Heart for the Work makes clear, Malawian medical students learn to confront poverty creatively, experiencing fatigue and frustration but also joy and commitment on their way to becoming physicians. The first ethnography of medical training in the global South, Claire L. Wendland’s book is a moving and perceptive look at medicine in a world where the transnational movement of people and ideas creates both devastation and possibility.

Wendland, a physician anthropologist, conducted extensive interviews and worked in wards, clinics, and operating theaters alongside the student doctors whose stories she relates. From the relative calm of Malawi’s College of Medicine to the turbulence of training at hospitals with gravely ill patients and dramatically inadequate supplies, staff, and technology, Wendland’s work reveals the way these young doctors engage the contradictions of their circumstances, shedding new light on debates about the effects of medical training, the impact of traditional healing, and the purposes of medicine.

In 1913, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston admitted its first patient, Mary Agnes Turner, who suffered from varicose veins in her legs. The surgical treatment she received, under ether anesthesia, was the most advanced available at the time. At the same hospital fifty years later, Nicholas Tilney—then a second-year resident—assisted in the repair of a large aortic aneurysm. The cutting-edge diagnostic tools he used to evaluate the patient’s condition would soon be eclipsed by yet more sophisticated apparatus, including minimally invasive approaches and state-of-the-art imaging technology, which Tilney would draw on in pioneering organ transplant surgery and becoming one of its most distinguished practitioners.

In Invasion of the Body, Tilney tells the story of modern surgery and the revolutions that have transformed the field: anesthesia, prevention of infection, professional standards of competency, pharmaceutical advances, and the present turmoil in medical education and health care reform. Tilney uses as his stage the famous Boston teaching hospital where he completed his residency and went on to practice (now called Brigham and Women's). His cast of characters includes clinicians, support staff, trainees, patients, families, and various applied scientists who push the revolutions forward.

While lauding the innovations that have brought surgeons' capabilities to heights undreamed of even a few decades ago, Tilney also previews a challenging future, as new capacities to prolong life and restore health run headlong into unsustainable costs. The authoritative voice he brings to the ancient tradition of surgical invasion will be welcomed by patients, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Leaving a Legacy: Lessons from the Writings of Daniel Drake is a selective collection of excerpts from the vast writings from the nineteenth-century doctor and medical pioneer Daniel Drake. From Drake’s life, documented here in his own words from excerpts of lectures, personal journal entries, presentations, speeches, books, and letters to his children, readers learn about the scope of his accomplishments in medicine, contributions to his community, and dedication to his family. Diller goes beyond biography to contextualize Drake’s life choices and what made him a role model for today’s physicians. Diller selected one hundred and eighty thematically arranged excerpts, which he paired with original reflection questions to guide the reader through thought-provoking prompts. In doing so, Diller presents the lessons from Drake’s remarkable life and work as a guide for others who wish to build an enduring legacy.

Medicine in the twenty-first century will be very different from the medicine of today; scientific, technological, economic, and ethical conditions of practice will be transformed. What do these changes portend for medical education? What knowledge should all medical students acquire? How can medical educators prepare students in the most cost-effective way?

This book describes efforts made at Harvard Medical School during the past to reorient general medical education. Harvard’s New Pathway has received national attention since its inception—including a multipart special on PBS’s Nova—because it offers a radical restructuring of the traditional medical school curriculum. Its creators, most of them contributors to this book, designed a program that gives students not only a core of scientific, biomedical, and clinical knowledge but also the skills, tools, and attitudes that will enable them to become lifelong learners, to cope with and use new information, and—most important—to provide better patient care.

New Pathways to Medical Education also tells the inside story of how a traditional and research-oriented faculty was persuaded to cooperate with colleagues outside their departments in adopting a student-centered, problem-based approach to learning. Central to this transformation was the Patient–Doctor course, which the book describes in detail. This course—which teaches students to LISC the patient–doctor relationship for the benefit of patients—is considered one of the most significant contributions to medical education in the New Pathway.

New Pathways to Medical Education will inspire physicians, medical scientists, and medical educators around the world to think and act more decisively to reform medical education. And because it documents the development of an innovative curriculum, this study will interest educators in all fields.

“A powerful and extraordinarily important book.”
—James P. Comer, MD

“A marvelous personal journey that illuminates what it means to care for people of all races, religions, and cultures. The story of this man becomes the aspiration of all those who seek to minister not only to the body but also to the soul.”
—Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think

Growing up in Jim Crow–era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. While race relations have changed dramatically since then, old ways of thinking die hard. In this blend of memoir and manifesto, Dr. White draws on his experience as a resident at Stanford Medical School, a combat surgeon in Vietnam, and head orthopedic surgeon at one of Harvard’s top teaching hospitals to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical care, and to explore how we can do better in a diverse twenty-first-century America.

“Gus White is many things—trailblazing physician, gifted surgeon, and freedom fighter. Seeing Patients demonstrates to the world what many of us already knew—that he is also a compelling storyteller. This powerful memoir weaves personal experience and scientific research to reveal how the enduring legacy of social inequality shapes America’s medical field. For medical practitioners and patients alike, Dr. White offers both diagnosis and prescription.”
—Jonathan L. Walton, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard University

“A tour de force—a compelling story about race, health, and conquering inequality in medical care…Dr. White has a uniquely perceptive lens with which to see and understand unconscious bias in health care…His journey is so absorbing that you will not be able to put this book down.”
—Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., author of All Deliberate Speed

If you’re going to have a heart attack, an organ transplant, or a joint replacement, here’s the key to getting the very best medical care: be a white, straight, middle-class male. This book by a pioneering black surgeon takes on one of the few critically important topics that haven’t figured in the heated debate over health care reform—the largely hidden yet massive injustice of bias in medical treatment.

Growing up in Jim Crow–era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. And while race relations have changed dramatically, old ways of thinking die hard. In Seeing Patients White draws upon his experience in startlingly different worlds to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical treatment, and to explore what it means for health care in a diverse twenty-first-century America.

White and coauthor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor–patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment. Their book brings together insights from the worlds of social psychology, neuroscience, and clinical practice to define the issues clearly and, most importantly, to outline a concrete approach to fixing this fundamental inequity in the delivery of health care.

Medical students preparing for a career in clinical practice must become familiar with a wide range of diagnostic imaging techniques and image-guided interventions. They must learn to identify the indications for radiological examination and recognize the role each procedure plays in the workup, diagnosis, and therapeutic management of patients. That is why Squire’s Fundamentals of Radiology has been such an important, long-standing resource for medical students, physicians, and other professionals at all stages of their careers. It teaches essential topics in the radiology curriculum and features hundreds of illustrative cases clinicians can turn to again and again in practice.

In this long-awaited seventh edition, Robert Novelline provides more than 600 new high-resolution images representing the current breadth of radiological procedures: conventional x-rays, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), angiography, radioisotope scanning, positron emission tomography (PET), and molecular imaging. This edition’s expanded coverage addresses dual energy CT, breast tomosynthesis, PET-MR scanning, and tractography brain imaging, along with best practices for managing patient experiences during and after examination. All new images were produced at a major teaching hospital using state-of-the-art imaging technologies.

Squire’s Fundamentals of Radiology is designed to be read cover to cover by students, with concepts, principles, and methods progressing in a logical, cumulative manner. It also serves as an invaluable tool for teachers and an indispensable reference for seasoned practitioners. Written by a radiologist who has trained thousands of medical students and residents, this textbook is the clear choice for excelling in the general practice of radiology.

“In recent decades, the deficiencies of our system of medical education and medical care have become clearer and more comprehensible to an expanding and highly vocal segment of the public. Many educators share the uneasiness and recognize the need for change.” These words from Dr. John Knowles's Preface define the context of this collection of thought-provoking essays, originally presented in 1966 as a series of lectures sponsored jointly by the Lowell Institute of Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Written by seven men distinguished in the fields of medicine, education, and government, they are addressed to everyone, expert and layman alike, concerned with the quality of medical care in the United States. The ultimate aim of medicine is to enhance the quality of life by the prevention of disease and the comprehensive care of the sick. Technological advances continually provide us with new and better tools, but medicine is plagued by rising costs, inefficient use of facilities and personnel, and critical shortages of manpower. Each author, from his particular point of view, recognizes the need to bring medicine into contact with the social sciences, and presents concrete proposals for government aid and curriculum reform.