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

Letter

Campaign to revitalise academic medicine

Direction of academic medicine is worrying

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

EDITOR—Three things concern me about the direction of academic medicine.1

Firstly, coordination of global concerns seems to be lacking in academic medicine. Diverse groups advocate for their causes, but there is no central organisation. For example, does a central group try to keep track of sanitation and public health data for various areas of the world? Does academic medicine leave this to the United Nations or does the academic community try to help the United Nations to organise the data? Does anyone track progress? When people want to volunteer to help, either as doctors or as teachers, has academic medicine provided a central clearing house to help match volunteers with needs? There seem to be "people to people" programmes and "doctors without borders," but these are not central organisations. Are all these concerns considered in academic public health, or are clinician-academicians involved?

Secondly, the pressure of research keeps . . . [Full text of this article]

Margaret S Terpenning, associate professor, internal medicine

Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, 11G GRECC, VA Hospital, 2215 Fuller Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, USA mterpenn@umich.edu


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