Goals for Medical Student Education

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The competent, effective, and compassionate practice of medicine and the advancement of knowledge about disease, its prevention and treatment require that physicians in training be introduced to a lifelong educational process. Medical school provides a critical phase of this education. The goals of the University of Michigan Medical School include educating individuals who are imbued with achieving the highest ethical and performance standards required to provide exemplary patient care, and graduating physicians who will assume leadership roles in the areas of clinical medicine, research, and teaching. These goals will be attained when students have demonstrated the following:

  1. The professional attributes of compassion, altruism, respect, integrity; and societal and professional responsibility in the context of a diverse and changing society;
  2. A lifelong commitment to achieving personal and professional excellence, including the critical evaluation of the performance of peers and self;
  3. A strong foundation in the biomedical sciences, clinical medicine, and in those aspects of public health, the humanities, ethics, and social and behavioral sciences that are relevant to medicine;
  4. The expertise to access and critically evaluate the scientific literature, to assimilate new scientific information, and to apply this knowledge to patient care;
  5. The ability to apply the scientific method and an appreciation of how knowledge of basic science and clinical medicine is integrated and applied;
  6. The ability to identify and reduce risk factors that contribute to the major causes of morbidity and mortality for individual patients, and for larger populations, across the life span;
  7. Skillfulness in obtaining and interpreting relevant information from patients, laboratory data, and other sources to deliver optimal patient care;
  8. The ability to organize and interpret clinical information and to make clinical decisions effectively and efficiently;
  9. Sustained excellence in patient management and treatment, including procedural skills;
  10. Interpersonal skills that facilitate effective and empathic relationships with patients, and effective collaborations with other health care professionals and teams.

Endorsed by the Executive Committee in 1991, Reviewed, revised and endorsed by the CPC in 2000, Reviewed, revised and endorsed by the CPC in September 2011.