Campaign to revitalise academic medicine: Isolation hinders academic medicine

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1376-a

BMJ 2004;328:1376 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1376-a

Letter

Campaign to revitalise academic medicine

Isolation hinders academic medicine

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

EDITOR—I spent 30 years in an academic experiment devotedto promoting "community oriented medicine" and saw that thedirection of academic medicine was not going to change if leftin the hands of the academics.^1
2 I then moved to health servicemanagement, which has allowed much room for thought about therole of academic medicine today.

Firstly, in the main, academic medicine is controlled by groupsneeding to replicate themselves.

Secondly, nobody asks the "consumers" of health care what theywould expect academic medicine to be doing.

Thirdly, academic reward is usually unrelated to relevant needsof medicine and health care, the number of papers and qualityof methods being the determinants.

Fourthly, a true alliance of academicians, politicians, economists,and consumers should look at where academic medicine needs togo.

Basil Porter, medical director

Southern Region, Maccabi Health Services, PO Box 69, Beersheva 84895, Israel basilporter@hotmail.com

Competing interests: None declared.

Tugwell P. Campaign to revitalise academic medicine kicks off. BMJ 2004;328: 597. (13 March.)[Free Full Text]
Porter B, Seidelman W. The politics of reform in medical education and health services. New York: Springer, 1992.