PROSTATE CANCER EPIDEMIOLOGY

1
From an address by Eugene F. Dubois to medical
students of Cornell University Medical College at
the beginning of the college year, 1923     
  "...as...facts have increased in number, the
teachers of medicine have increased the rate of
cramming the students.  This has developed the
method of 'spoon feeding.'  Our students resemble
domestic fowls fattening for the market,
expecting their food to be served to them on
trays.  We should prefer to have game birds who
know how to find their own food.  You can take
all the courses listed in the catalogue, work
hard, pass all your examinations, and yet make an
utter failure of your course in the medical
school.  The best that we can teach you now will
be hopelessly inadequate in another decade.  You
must teach yourself to study the medicine of this
decade in such a manner that you can teach
yourself the medicine of the next decade.  You
must learn to do your own searching for
knowledge.  You must develop your own powers of
observation and critical judgment.  You must
learn how to use the literature and must prepare
yourself to substitute your own wards, your own
laboratories, and your own libraries for those of
this medical school..."
2
Core Competency In Pathology

• PATHOLOGY SPECIFIC
• A data base of facts that form the foundation of
  medicine, selected from basic disease mechanisms
  and common and illustrative disorders
• PATHOLOGY FACILITATED
• Ability to integrate information from diverse
  sources to build on the data base and apply it to
  solve problems
• Acquire the tools to manage the ever-growing
  databases

3
The Current State

• Excessive attention to impart an ever increasing
  data base cramming of new information into
  progressively shorter schedules (we teach too
  many facts)
• Insufficient attention to tools of data gathering
  , synthesis, and application (we do not teach
  how to acquire facts and to apply them)

4
The Solution

• Reduce the content and define it by clearly
  spelled out and accomplishable objectives
• Introduce data gathering and analytic skills (
  Text books,Pub Med searches, Journal clubs, yes I
  do mean journal clubs)
• Devise objective driven exercises that require
  the application of the above to solve problems