Doctors Serving People
240 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:01 Aug 2008
ISBN:9780813543161
Doctors Serving People
Restoring Humanism to Medicine through Student Community Service
By Edward J Eckenfels; Foreword by Joseph O'Donnell
Rutgers University Press
Today's physicians are medical scientists, drilled in the basics of physiology, anatomy, genetics, and chemistry. They learn how to crunch data, interpret scans, and see the human form as a set of separate organs and systems in some stage of disease. Missing from their training is a holistic portrait of the patient as a person and as a member of a community. Yet a humanistic passion and desire to help people often are the attributes that compel a student toward a career in medicine. So what happens along the way to tarnish that idealism? Can a new approach to medical education make a difference?
Doctors Serving People is just such a prescriptive. While a professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Edward J. Eckenfels helped initiate and direct a student-driven program in which student doctors worked in the poor, urban communities during medical school, voluntarily and without academic credit. In addition to their core curriculum and clinical rotations, students served the social and health needs of diverse and disadvantaged populations. Now more than ten years old, the program serves as an example for other medical schools throughout the country. Its story provides a working model of how to reform medical education in America.
Doctors Serving People is just such a prescriptive. While a professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Edward J. Eckenfels helped initiate and direct a student-driven program in which student doctors worked in the poor, urban communities during medical school, voluntarily and without academic credit. In addition to their core curriculum and clinical rotations, students served the social and health needs of diverse and disadvantaged populations. Now more than ten years old, the program serves as an example for other medical schools throughout the country. Its story provides a working model of how to reform medical education in America.
Eckenfels hears with crystal clarity the drumbeats that are pleading for more soulful, caring physicians. His book represents a valuable approach to recenter American medical education on the principles of commitment and passion.
A story of vision, courage, and grassroots activism in the city of Chicago. Eckenfels' project provides a working model of how to reform medical education in the United States.
Eckenfels hears with crystal clarity the drumbeats that are pleading for more soulful, caring physicians. His book represents a valuable approach to recenter American medical education on the principles of commitment and passion.
A story of vision, courage, and grassroots activism in the city of Chicago. Eckenfels' project provides a working model of how to reform medical education in the United States.
Edward J. Eckenfels is a professor emeritus in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Rush University Medical Center.
Foreword by Joseph F. O’ Donnell, MD
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Humanism in the Time of Technocracy
Chapter 1 The Emergence of the Rush Community Service
Initiatives Program
Chapter 2 Clinics Serving the Poor and Homeless
Chapter 3 The New Faces of AIDS
Chapter 4 Community-Based Grassroots Programs
Chapter 5 The Community Today, Tomorrow the World
Chapter 6 Looking for Meaning
Chapter 7 Empirical Estimates of Patients and Clients Served
Chapter 8 The Learning and Development of the Students
Chapter 9 Nurturing Idealism, Advancing Humanism,
and Planning Reform
Chapter 10 A Personal Reflection: The Staying Power of the
Call of Service
Appendix A Sources of Funding for RCSIP
Appendix B Guidelines for Maintaining Safety and Security
Appendix C Publications and Presentations of RCSIP Participants
Appendix D The Social Medicine, Community Health, and
Human Rights Curriculum
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Humanism in the Time of Technocracy
Chapter 1 The Emergence of the Rush Community Service
Initiatives Program
Chapter 2 Clinics Serving the Poor and Homeless
Chapter 3 The New Faces of AIDS
Chapter 4 Community-Based Grassroots Programs
Chapter 5 The Community Today, Tomorrow the World
Chapter 6 Looking for Meaning
Chapter 7 Empirical Estimates of Patients and Clients Served
Chapter 8 The Learning and Development of the Students
Chapter 9 Nurturing Idealism, Advancing Humanism,
and Planning Reform
Chapter 10 A Personal Reflection: The Staying Power of the
Call of Service
Appendix A Sources of Funding for RCSIP
Appendix B Guidelines for Maintaining Safety and Security
Appendix C Publications and Presentations of RCSIP Participants
Appendix D The Social Medicine, Community Health, and
Human Rights Curriculum
Notes
Bibliography
Index
