European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - March 11, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 16 the stars and stripes tuesday March 11, 1986 physicians who Are More than body techs by Daniel q. Haney associated press a Guidebook for 24 fresh new doctors to be at Harvard medical school contains notion that considering the leade traditions of the place smells of frivolity even radicalism. The responsibility for learning lies with the student the Booklet avers. Hardly crazed perhaps but that sentence is a staggering departure from a Century of custom. And it is the Core of an Experiment in medical education that May change or at least influence the Way doctors everywhere learn the Art and science of their Craft. For the two dozen volunteers who enrolled last fall the four years at Havard medical school have been totally rethought and reshaped. The idea is to create doctors who Are something More than technicians of disease or mechanics of the body. Healers should share a groundwork of values and attitudes along with skills and knowledge. Besides the processes of life the curriculum attempts to infuse the qualities of Good doctoring compassion and humility a dedication to prevention As Well As treatment a lifelong passion for learning. The most obvious change of the new approach is its near abolition of that warhorse of medical training the lecture. No one lays out essential facts for these Young people. Instead each student with some gentle prodding decides what he needs to know and then learns it. This initiative May Well turn out to be Harvard s most impressive innovation of the 1980s," Derek Bok its president predicted two years ago. If it works these medical students will learn How to solve problems More important they will learn How to learn. And perhaps they will be better doctors. Paul Unger a fourth year student from Lac Mont n.y., has Learned Medicine the old Way and he Felt so strongly about the need for a new approach that he took a year off to help plan the experimental curriculum. Most Liberal arts institutions try to teach you How to think he said. You write papers state your own ideas and learn How to say them  completely stopped when you got to medical school. It was very much Here s the stuff. Memorize it and spit it back.1 " in most medical schools student spend their first two years studying the science that will underpin their careers. From 8 30 in the morning until 5 30 at night professors talk about the latest details of their specialities. Students listen passively Drill in the facts and recite them on exams. There Are so Many facts so much to learn. Once doctors could master almost everything in their professions. But in the decades since world War ii the volume of medical lore has swollen beyond the capacity of the human brain to contain it. Information doubles triples quadruples faster than anyone can keep up. Many of us have no idea what the students need to know in order to be Good physicians says or. Dan Goodenough a biologist who has taught the old Wayand the new Way. There s an enormous amount of information that keeps growing and there s a feeling that there s no a Norman Rockwell cover for a 1958 edition of the saturday evening Post Way that we re Ever going to be Able to say it All he says. There s a tremendous sense of responsibility and guilt that if we Don t say it All we re going to somehow be responsible for a murderer who s going to go out into society. This has degenerated to a state where we As lecturers deliver Gilbert and Sullivan Patter songs. We get up and just try to run through it All in an hour. There s no interest on our part As to whether anybody really understands or learns from that. But somehow by saying it by covering it we absolve ourselves of responsibility. If the students Don t know it that s their problem. Of course that s  so four years ago Daniel o. Tosteson Dean of the medical school and the faculty set out to find a better Way to educate doctors. The result was an Experiment called the new pathway. It is he says an attempt to involve every student in a Happy Way in becoming a  Medicine is changing so quickly that much of what a student learns will be outdated in a few years anyway. Some of the most impressive advances of their Field Organ transplants new diagnostic machines insights into the Workings of genes and the complexities of the immune system have occurred during the professional memories of most doctors practising today. So a major goal is to train competent doctors without requiring them to memorize stupefying lumps of facts to make medical school the Start of a process of self education that never stops. Students will of course remember facts but they will ferret out this information themselves and learn it As they need it. Instead of attending lectures students will spend their first two years of medical school in problem based  each Day groups of six or eight students meet and discuss a medical problem that has been prepared for them. They consider possible explanations and theories. They talk about what they know and what they need to know to figure out the problem. They set learning goals and go off to read texts and journal articles and talk to faculty experts. Then they reconvene and discuss what they be Learned. A faculty member sits in on the sessions and steers the group Back from tangents and Blind alleys. But mostly the professor keeps quiet. It s not easy for those of us who have earned our stripes by opining about what we know says or. Gordon t. Moore director of the new pathway. The Bottom line is very simple. The less you say the More students do and the More you say the less they do. That s been a hard lesson to  instead of taking such Standard courses As Anatomy and microbiology the students attend three month blocks of tutorials that tie together related medical disciplines. They have names like the body and metabolism of matter and  Luann Wilkerson an education specialist says this approach is based on two or three decades of research into the psychology of learning. It s very hard to think of an educational principle to support the use of lectures As a primary method of transmitting information she says. Students attend one lecture daily but they Aren t cover it All recitations of medical trivia. Instead senior faculty members Are encouraged to talk about the big concepts of their subject not the details. Each student is assigned a faculty member who will serve As an example and Mentor during the four years of medical school. It s our Hunch that a lot of the personal characters of physicians Are developed out of role models says Moore. You can t teach a student to be honest to be caring to be humane. You have to see it and feel