Croatian medical journal
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Scientific approach to academic medicine crisis would require research to provide evidence for the present state of academic medicine and future actions. The prerequisites for such a research would be clear definitions, appropriate indicators, and measuring instruments. The approach should be holistic, covering tripartite academic medicine activity: education, research, and health care.
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Like any other area of academic medicine in Croatia, academic ophthalmology has always been limited by or has depended on the factors outside the profession itself: during the communist regime, it was mostly political and ideological correctness of academic ophthalmologists, and today during the social and economic transition, it is the lack of finances, planning, and sophisticated technology. The four university eye clinics, which are the pillars of academic ophthalmology in Croatia, provide health care to most difficult cases, educate students, residents, and specialists, and do research. ⋯ This ever growing imbalance between requirements imposed on academic ophthalmology today and its possibilities make it less and less attractive, especially in comparison with private practice. The possible solution lies in increasing the independence of ophthalmology from pharmaceutical industry and politics, especially in research and financial aspects.
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Croatian medical journal · Jun 2004
Academic medicine--experiences from Finland and suggestions for the future.
This article presents the basic facts about education, health care system, and academic medicine in Finland. The issue of the academic medicine in the world is discussed and Finnish models compared with those of the rest of the world. Possible solutions for the recovery of academic medicine, education, and research are proposed.
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Academic medicine comprises education, research, and medical care, respectively provided by medical schools, research institutions, and teaching hospitals. Thus far, academic medicine has been unsuccessful in establishing, protecting, promoting, and improving the quality of care. Its role in that area should therefore be reconsidered. ⋯ Early exposure of medical students to the principles and practices of quality of care improvement would be a starting point for a life long process of experience-based learning that allows physicians to change and improve practice through the application of relevant knowledge and skills. It is essential that changes in graduate and postgraduate education and training be introduced, to improve an understanding of the importance of focusing on the care process from the patient's perspective as well as on the need for interdisciplinary cooperation and team performance as prerequisites for good medical care. Their education should also emphasize the measurement of the quality of delivered care, provide an understanding of the demand of society for accountability and how to meet it, as well as competence in using the principles and practice of quality improvement to provide, document, and improve the quality of care in institutions of academic medicine.