Commentary: Are We Ready to Embrace the Rest of the Flexner Report?

At the start of the 20th century, Abraham Flexner proposed a number of reforms for medical education in his seminal 1910 report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada. His recommendations were wide ranging, including a strong scientific basis, use of pedagogical methods, and faculty whose principal role is that of educator. Of these, reforms in science education for medicine received the widest attention and revolutionized physicians' intellectual foundations for medical practice. But what of Flexner's other suggested reforms, those skills needed to develop "the educated man" who can meet the "greatly modified ethical responsibility" of modern medical practice? As the 21st century begins, Flexner's ideas on these other subjects he considered critical for physician training are reappearing in the medical education literature. If history is a guide, medical education could be on the cusp of another set of great advances by renewing interest in medical humanities, reevaluating the makeup of medical school teaching faculty, and seeking innovations in pedagogy to facilitate active and integrated learning. The time is ripe to embrace the rest of the Flexner Report.