Medical Education in 21st century

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Medical education is a long process and medical educators have to consider effect of medical education for comming years. 21st century requires wider roles for physicians and medical education have to prepare physicians who are capable to assume those roles. One special issue related to medical education is how to prepare optimal numbers of physicians in the society.In Japan in 1986, special committee within the Ministry of Health and Welfare considered this issue and 10% reduction of entering class of medical schools was recommended. Recently agin the Ministry of Health and Welfare established another committee to consider further reduction and we examined medical education programs, numbers of physicians and find out there are many elements to be considered and according to different assumptions future forecast is quite different.We investigated global trend on physician work force policy and there is no consensus even in developed countries. For example U.K.will increase the number of medical schools intake on the contrary of trend of Germany.We also examined the practicing physicians working conditions in questionaires and found out great discrepancy between reality and ideal settings, e.g. consultation time, number of patients and working hours. We also noted there will be more detailed examination of relationship between medical care cost and number of physicians in future.