Abe Flexner, where are you? We need you!

It is just a century since Abraham Flexner was invited by the Carnegie Foundation to evaluate medical education in the U.S. and Canada. After a visit to all of the existing medical schools at that time, Flexner issued a report in 1910 that revolutionized American and Canadian medical schools. The demise of proprietary schools, the solidification of ties between medical schools and universities and the introduction of the laboratory into the curriculum were outcomes that inaugurated the Flexnerian era in medical education. American and Canadian schools became the world's leaders. The educational patterns that emanated from the report dominated medical school curricula for the remainder of the 20(th) century. But as science and medicine changed drastically during the past 50 years, medical education has floundered and changed little. Although the environs of clinical education (hospitals and clinics) are dramatically different than 50 years ago, the process of clinical training has barely changed. That education is a science has yet to be fully acknowledged by medicine-witness the lack of continuity of undergraduate, post-graduate and continuing education. Medical education remains an 'orphan' supported by clinical practice and research in the same fashion that medical educators are 'orphans' in the academic promotions process. There is need for a modern day Abe Flexner-someone to pull the disparate parts together, to shake-up the lethargy and complacency, to streamline medical education into the 21(st) century.