An outsider's perspective on a provocative proposal: what would Flexner think?

Abstract

This viewpoint commentary focuses on a proposal for integrated anatomy education in undergraduate college from Dr. Darda published in the Anatomical Sciences Education. Although the proposal is for college level education, the proposal echoes some ideas proposed a century ago by Abraham Flexner when he wrote his report titled "Medical Education in the United States and Canada." It begins with an acknowledgement of the author's status as an outsider. There have been numerous calls for change in basic science education, particularly in medical education. Interestingly, however, the monumental reforms of the "Flexner Report" were impelled largely from outside the specific discipline of medical education. The commentary discussion then moves to observations about the proposal for Integrative Anatomy and support for the proposal from both the Flexner Report and the 2009 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, "Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians." The essay considers the benefits of the research on the learning sciences that now inform our work in education; the influence of competency-based education that frees education from a lock-step approach of course completion to a student-focused integrative approach to learning; and the availability of online resources for anatomy education through repositories, such as MedEdPORTAL. The final observation is that the changes underway in education and in the sciences basic to medicine, in particular, are substantial and will require the dialogue that Dr. Darda is promoting with his provocative proposal.