Medical Education

What is medical education?

Medical education is related to the practice of medicine, either the initial training to become a doctor or further training thereafter. This education as well training differs vastly across the world. Different teaching methods have been used in medical education that is an active area of educational research.

Entry-level medical education

Entry-level medical education programs are triple-level courses taken up at a medical school. These may be either undergraduate-entry or graduate-entry programs and depend on jurisdiction and university.

As a rule, initial training is given in a medical school. Usually, initial medical education is divided into two stages – preclinical and clinical studies. The previous one consists of the basic sciences, like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology. The next comprises teaching in the different areas of clinical medicine like internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, surgery. However, more and more medical programs are employing systems-based curricula.

Post-graduate medical education

After completion of entry-level training, the newly graduated doctors are quite often made to undergo a period of supervised practice. This is before full registration is granted and is most often of one year duration. It may be referred to as "internship" or "provisional registration".

They may undertake further training in a particular field of medicine if they wish. In certain jurisdictions this starts right away after completion of entry-level training. Other jurisdictions require junior doctors to do generalist (unstreamed) training for a number of years before starting specialization.

Medical education in the United States

Here it includes educational and all those activities involved in the education and training of medical doctors in the United States. This is right from entry-level training through to continuing education of qualified specialists.

Medicine is a diverse profession with many options available. For example, some doctors work in pharmaceutical research, occupational medicine (within a company), public health medicine (working for the general health of a population in an area), or join the armed forces.