Scientist or science-stuffed? Discourses of science in North American medical education.

CONTEXT

The dominance of biomedical science in medical education has been contested throughout the past century, with recurring calls for more social science and humanities content. The centrality of biomedicine is frequently traced back to Abraham Flexner's 1910 report, 'Medical Education in the United States and Canada'. However, Flexner advocated for a scientist-doctor, rather than a curriculum filled with science content. Examination of the discourses of science since Flexner allows us to explore the place of various knowledge forms in medical education.

METHODS

A Foucauldian critical discourse analysis was performed, examining the discourses of scientific medicine in Flexner's works and North American medical education articles in subsequent decades. Foucault's methodological principles were used to identify statements, keywords and metaphors that emerged in the development of the discourses of scientific medicine, with particular attention to recurring arguments and shifts in the meaning and use of terms.

RESULTS

Flexner's scientist-doctor was an incisive thinker who drew upon multiple forms of knowledge. In the post-Flexner medical education reforms, the perception of science as a discursive object embedded in the curriculum became predominant over that of the scientist as the discursive subject who uses science. Science was then considered core curricular content and was discursively framed as impossibly vast. A parallel discourse, one of the insufficiency of biomedical science for the proper training of doctors, has existed over the past century, even as the humanities and social sciences have remained on the margins in medical school curricula.

CONCLUSIONS

That discourses of scientific medicine have reinforced the centrality of biomedicine in medical education helps to explain the persistent marginalisation of other important knowledge domains. Medical educators need to be aware of the effects of these discourses on understandings of medical knowledge, particularly when contemplating curricular reform.