Unmet needs and unused skills: physicians' reflections on their liberal arts education.

Physicians who graduated from 1955 to 1982 from three liberal arts colleges in southeastern Pennsylvania were asked about the ways that their undergraduate education had prepared or failed to prepare them for careers in medicine and about changes that they would, in retrospect, have made in their courses of undergraduate study. For many, college had failed to meet their perceived need, as physicians, for skill in dealing with people, but had provided skills in the form of basic science knowledge and willingness to be different that exceeded the demands of their careers. They wished that in college they had taken more courses in the humanities--especially art, history, music, and English literature--and less chemistry, mathematics, physics, and biology. Would-be physicians should be encouraged to take full advantage of the humanizing opportunities of a liberal arts education with confidence that it will contribute to their future professional and personal lives.