Editorial The Future of Academic Medicine Ana Marušić Croatian Medical Journal Note: This editorial was prepared from the published articles Zagreb University School of Medicine, on ICRAM activities and the Power Point presentation on Zagreb, Croatia the five scenarios of futures of academic medicine in 2025, prepared by Dr Jocalyn Clark, British Medical Journal. The presentation of the scenarios was used by the author of this editorial for lectures on several occasions, including the Sym- Corresponding author: posium on “Gefährdung der univerisitären Medizin”, Neue Ana Marušić Universität Heidelberg, 22 July 2005; 10th “Grazer Konferenz” Salata 3 on “Curriculum Development as an Ongoing Process” in Vi- 10000 Zagreb enna, 11-13 May 2006; and the Symposium on “Ethics and Croatia Medicine: Today and Tomorrow” in Zagreb, 24 November e-mail:
[email protected] 2006. Received: 05. 09. 2006 Key words: Education, Medical; Schools, Medical; Biomedical Accepted: 25. 09. 2006 Research; Evidence-Based Medicine; Bosnia-Herzegovina. Academic medicine is usually defined as a cal Sciences in the UK, published in 2002 triad of teaching, research and practice in its report “Clinical Academic Medicine in medicine (1, 2). More broadly, it can be de- Jeopardy: Recommendations for Change”; fined as the “capacity of the health-care sys- and the American Association of Medical tem to think, study, research, discover, eval- Colleges released in 2004 their analysis of uate, innovate, teach, learn, and improve” medical education system in the USA, en- (3). Although these attributes of academic titled “Educating Doctors to Provide High medicine make it crucial for the improve- Quality Medical Care: A Vision for Medical ment of health, there are many voices in the Education in the United States” (3).