Talk:Medical education

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[edit] Case study

According to Walter Bradford Cannon in his biography The Way of the Investigator, p. 85, he initiated "Case study" methods in medical education. He says that he wrote an article "The Case System of Teaching Systemic Medicine" for the Boston Medical and Sugical Journal. (no date given) He says he was prompted by observing his roomate Harry A. Bigelow prepare for his law courses with the Casebook method. In WP Case study is devoted to sociology with no mention of medicine. Cannon's statement follows:

The idea of using printed clinical records, that I suggested as basis for discussing diagonosis and proper treatment, was at once favorably received and put into use. Case books on disease of the nervous system, on general medicine, and on diseases of children soon appeared.... That reform started about 1900.

Can anyone confirm Cannon's story. What about today's educational paradigm ? Rgdboer (talk) 00:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Cannon's story is easily disproved. A little reading in the history of medicine quickly demonstrates that the case study was a -- if not the -- principal method of instruction in so-called Western medicine, as far back as Classical Greece and Rome. --Una Smith (talk) 04:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Another thing, a case study in sociology is equivalent to a "clinical review" in medicine. The "case study" referred to here concerns the use of a medical case report (often a mock report) as a teaching tool. ---Una Smith (talk) 05:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)