The undergraduate medical curriculum

MUCH IS GOOD, even excellent , in American medical education, and I do not mean to ignore or denigrate all that is positive. It is to the credit of the academic medical communi ty that we have always been wil l ing to take a hard look at what we are doing and to consider ways of improving the process by which we train our progeny, the young physicians who will succeed us. I want to take two approaches to the quest ion of whe the r the undergraduate medical cur r icu lum adequately prepares students for graduate training in internal medicine. The first approach is to consider in the abstract the desirable attributes of an internist and to decide whe ther medical school prepares students to assume those attributes. The second is to rev iew whe ther students entering residencies in internal medicine consider themselves adequate ly p repared for their future careers.