Medical School to Revive M.D. Degree
THE Dartmouth Board of Trustees has approved plans for the Dartmouth Medical School that will significantly reshape the pattern of medical education here and possibly serve as a model for medical schools throughout the country. Under the new program, subject only to the availability of necessary new financing, Dartmouth, one of the nation's oldest medical schools, will return once again to awarding the M.D. degree as it did prior to 1914.
The Board was encouraged to take action at this time by four major gifts to Dartmouth's Third Century Fund totaling $4.25 million and designated for the Medical School. Plans for making the School a pioneer in the area of modern medical education have been under study by the medical faculty since Dean Carleton B. Chapman assumed leadership of the School in September 1966. The recent major gifts, however, have made it possible to advance implementation of the plans.
Rupert C. Thompson Jr. '28, chairman of Dartmouth's current capital gifts campaign to raise $51 million, described the four gifts as follows:
(1) A gift of $1,750,000 from an anonymous alumnus, for increased teaching facilities at the Medical School. This is the largest single contribution ever received by Dartmouth from a living alumnus.
(2) A gift of $1,500,000 from a man and his wife who are friends of Dartmouth with a particular interest in medical education, for construction of a teaching-research building.
(3) An anonymous grant totaling $750,000 consisting of $650,000 endowment for a chair in medicine and $100,000 for medical scholarship aid, both elements conditional on the College raising an additional $100,000 for each area from other sources.
(4) A gift of $250,000 from James C. Chilcott '20 to construct a teaching auditorium-laboratory in the new medical facilities planned for the school.
Dean Chapman stressed that although the proposed Dartmouth program will involve an enlarged school it is primarily designed to respond to today's rapidly accelerating demand for broadening, upgrading, and shortening the total span of education for medicine.
Current estimates indicate there is a national annual need for 10,000 new Physicians just to replace normal attrition due to death and retirement. By 1975, Dean Chapman noted, the need will have grown to 15,000 annually, reflecting demands for broader and improved medical care. Today, U.S. medical schools are graduating about 8,000 doctors each year.
Core elements of the Dartmouth Plan are (1) shortening the time required to produce doctors from the beginning of college to the granting of the M.D. degree, and (2) upgrading and restructuring the medical school curriculum.
Simply stated, the plan would admit a student to the Dartmouth Medical School after three years of undergraduate education (with some exceptional students possibly entering after two undergraduate years). The Medical School would operate on the basis of an 11-month academic year.
The first two years of study under the plan would comprise (1) a revised basic science curriculum, (2) an introductory series in clinical medicine, and (3) closely coordinated work with Arts and Sciences departments to provide continuation of college work in a variety of fields. The clinical experience would be made up of one year each of clerkship and internship, the latter being planned and operated by the Medical School rather than by the hospital.
Under the Dartmouth Plan, the nine years traditionally required to traverse the system from the beginning of college to completion of internship will be shortened to seven for most students and to six years for exceptional students, with a few students requiring eight years.
According to Dean Chapman, implementation of the plan at the Dartmouth Medical School is phased during the next six years to result in a total enrollment of 168 students in 1973-74 - 64 in each of the first and second years, and 20 each in the third and fourth years. Currently there are 95 students in the two-year Medical School.
The Dartmouth Plan is based on the conviction that it is the business of the Medical School to train a student so that he can move either into research and academic pursuits or into medical practice, recognizing that student decisions on such matters may occur at various times during their training. Dean Chapman predicted that when fully developed the plan will produce a graduate who is more broadly trained and can proceed with equal facility to the next stage of preparation for medical practice, a research calling, or into new opportunities in community medicine.
A key component in the Dartmouth Plan is the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital which is currently doubling its capacity to a total of 480 beds. The Hitchcock Clinic, a group of 70 highly qualified physicians, along with fulltime clinical faculty in the Medical School, will provide clinical instruction for students under the new plan.
Although building funds related to the plan are largely in hand through the grants mentioned earlier, Dean Chapman noted that the Medical School still seeks $14 million in additional endowment to implement the program.
Japanese educators and industrialists who visited Dartmouth May 17 observe studentsat work in the Kiewit Computation Center. Assistant Director Tom Byrne '55 at left.
