On the Education of the History of Medicine in the Korean Medical Schools

Hwang, Sang Ik; Seo, Hong Gwan

Abstract

Authors got the following information on the present state of the education on the history of medicine in the Korean medical schools through analyzing the responses of the medical schools to the questionnaires that we sent and the related parts of The Present State of Medical Education in Medical Schools, 1994 (published by The Committee of Deans of Korean Medical Schools). In 1994, 27 of 32 medical schools (except Kon-kuk, Pusan, Yonsei, Inje and Chungnam Medical Schools) offered 41 lectures of the related subjects, of which 'History of Medicine' and 'Introduction to Medicine' were offered mainly to the premedical students, and 'Medical Ethics' largely to junior or senior students. And we found that the lectures varied widely in lecture-hours, credits, the specialties of the instructors(most of the lectures were conducted by non-medical historians), and so on. In the latter part of this paper (based on the discussions at the 1st Workshop for the Improvement of the Education on the History of Medicine held on the 9th of February 1995) which was focused on the goals and objectives of the lectures, credits and lecture-hours of the course, ideal style and method of the course operation, contents of the lecture, authors stressed the topic-oriented lecture and the voluntary participation of the students in the courses.