Would involving community physicians in the reform process enhance clinical teaching?
WREN: We have a lot of involvement from the community. At the affiliated hospitals a large percentage of teaching is done by clinicians who are not necessarily faculty appointees. We absolutely require voluntary clinical faculty, but teaching can be a strain on these colleagues because they are asked to commit time, usually without compensation. REGULA: I think one thing is clear. As long as we have a medical school here, we’ll have between 200 and 300 students in clinical training for multiple years, and Stanford simply does not have enough full-time faculty to train these students. That’s one of the reasons we affiliate with the Palo Alto VA, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Kaiser and other institutions. FRANKEL: The approach the Senate has decided to pursue is to seriously analyze the structure of the curriculum – basic science and clinical science. Then we will move over to content. Basic science courses may pose more content difficulties because the material is constantly chang
