BMJ  2004;328:1377 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1377

Letter

Campaign to revitalise academic medicine

Focus on health care is needed

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Tugwell announces the campaign to revitalise academic medicine.¹ I firmly believe that many academic leaders are not necessarily the role models or even the clinical leaders they should be. In particular, although many are outstanding scientists in a branch of the biomedical or even clinical sciences, it is rare for them to bring a truly academic perspective to their clinical work. That is, they rarely apply the rigorous principles of science to their clinical work, by questioning established dogma, testing new ways of doing things, or even evaluating clinical practices.

Without leadership in clinical work I believe that academic medicine is doomed to becoming increasingly less relevant to health care and more focused on biomedical science. Biomedical science is important, but I question whether biomedical scientists should be the academic medical leaders, with their attention elsewhere and not directly on improving health and health care and teaching others . . . [Full text of this article]

Flinders University, Adelaide, SA 5042, Australia paddy.phillips@flinders.edu.au

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