Tag Archives: Medical education
Wagner’s Operas and Medical Education
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd September 2023Are Richard Wagner’s operas a potential tool to teach medical students and young doctors humanities? is the title of a paper published by Gunter Wolf a member of the Department of Internal Medicine III, University Hospital Jena. He is also an expert on the operas of Wagner. The abstract of the paper is below. At…
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Heather Mac Donald on Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th August 2022The outstanding public intellectual, Heather Mac Donald has written a penetrating analysis of the current state of medical education, practice criteria, and organizational structure. Appropriately called the Corruption of Medicine, it details the horrible pit the profession has thrown itself into. Gone is first do no harm. In its place is the patient be damned…
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On the Practice of Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th May 2021As a student, trainee, educator, scientist, practitioner, and occasionally as a patient, I have observed medicine as an insider for close to two-thirds of a century. While the power of medical technology has grown exponentially over this span, the general principles of medical practice remain the same. My subject is the interplay between these two…
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Teaching Medicine in 2020
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st March 2020Dr Ezekiel Emanuel whose job at the University of Pennsylvania is to think deep thoughts has a short piece just published online in the JAMA. In it he observes, rightly I believe, that the internet has changed the first two years of medical such that most teachers are no longer needed. The first two years…
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The Common Good
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th December 2019Conservatives Need To Support Labor As Much As They Support Capital Formation is a piece by Jon Schweppe. In it he argues for policies which he thinks will benefit the common good. He thinks that the government should encourage the well being of workers and that such a stance should be supported by conservatives since…
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Does a Physician Need to Attend College?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st September 2019There have been a spate of articles about the value of a college education. Most conclude that its value resides solely in a piece of paper that gets its owner a higher paying job. They go on to declare that most jobs really gain nothing from a college education. All of them allow that a…
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A New Medical Curriculum
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th October 2015The medical school curriculum is undergoing another revision. These changes to the course of instruction occur more frequently than those of an infant’s diaper. They typically are accompanied by statements like “A curriculum change can have a large impact on a student body.” Such a statement presumably assumes the impact will be positive. It is…
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Medical Student Burnout and the Challenge to Patient Care
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd November 2008The above is the title of an article in the New York Times. It depicts the emotional trauma endured by its author during her four years in medical school. While her suffering is depicted at length the reason for it is not. It reads as if she were unprepared for the Spanish Inquisition which as…
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How to Succeed as a Clinician Educator
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th December 2007Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation in February, 2007 and at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center /Internal Medicine Grand Rounds in April 2007. This presentation may be used for any noncommercial purpose as long as the original source is cited. Requires PowerPoint. How to Succeed as a Clinician…
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