Essential Population-Based Competencies for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Medical Students

Abstract

This chapter is written from the standpoint of an academic clinician. Its perspective is therefore likely to differ from that which might be advanced by an epidemiologist, community physician, or other expert in population-based medicine. But perhaps this is no bad thing, for all fields benefit from external scrutiny from nonexperts, and in addition it is possible that any recommendations emerging might be closer to the practicable than those that might be advanced by experts in the field almost inevitably tinged with missionary zeal! On the other hand, the writer is disadvantaged by his own lack of expertise in population medicine and apologizes in advance for the fauxpas that will inevitably be committed. The attitudes expressed have been largely derived from exercising substantial responsibilities for organization of undergraduate medical education at my own medical school, together with a more nationally oriented role in postgraduate education in internal medicine in the United Kingdom.