“We are told during college and medical school that we must memorize everything. With the explosion of information, however, it is more practical to know the specific question for which you need the answer for and have reliable sources. The goal is to memorize as much as possible, but also know how to find information in the most efficient manner.”
Javier Benítez MD discussing the death of the textbook on Academic Life in Emergency Medicine
The last sentence of this quote represents the key to understanding how we need to restructure medical education. Our current system ONLY emphasizes memorizing information that is too numerous and too quickly out of date to be useful. We need to incorporate the judicious and efficient use of information resources into our teaching so that medical graduates are better equipped for real world medical practice.
