Psychiatric values in a new method of medical education.

An experiment in medical education at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School has been described, namely, "The Family Health Advisor Service." This has become another educational device, which facilitates learning through the implementation of motivation by personal contact with medical and family problems early in the medical curricula, and the encouragement of maturation through the development of responsibility. Students become Family Health Advisors on admission, and remain so throughout the 4 years of medical school work. During this period every sort of problem comes up in connection with the health of the individual members of the family—the treatment of a pregnant mother with syphilis, the diagnosis of measles and the community resources for supplying preventive inoculations of globulin, the advisability of an operation, enuresis, or helping a man of 82 to meet the anxieties of old age. The student has experience in interpreting the doctors and hospital to the patient, and the patient and hi...