An Established Program of Graduate Education in Psychosomatic Medicine

The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine

“…The problem is hardly new, for the first efforts to introduce a more holistic approach into the undergraduate medical curriculum actually date back to Adolph Meyer's program at Johns Hopkins, which was initiated before 1920 (27). At Rochester, a program directed to medical students and to physicians during and after their residency training, and designed to inculcate psychosocial knowledge and skills appropriate for their future work as clinicians or teachers, has been in existence for 30 years (28). While difficult to measure outcome objectively, its impact, as indicated by a questionnaire on how students and graduates view the issues involved in illness and patient care, appears to have been appreciable (29).…”

The need for a new medical model: A challenge for biomedicine.

“…The problem is hardly new, for the first efforts to introduce a more holistic approach into the undergraduate medical curriculum actually date back to Adolph Meyer’s program at Johns Hopkins, which was initiated before 1920 (27). At Rochester, a program directed to medical students and to physicians during and after their residency training, and designed to inculcate psychosocial knowledge and skills appropriate for their future work as clinicians or teachers, has been in existence for 30 years (28). While difficult to measure outcome objectively, its impact, as indicated by a questionnaire on how students and graduates view the issues involved in illness and patient care, appears to have been appreciable (29).…”

“…At Rochester, a program directed to medical students and to physicians during and after their residency training, and designed to inculcate psychosocial knowledge and skills appropriate for their future work as clinicians or teachers, has been in existence for 30 years (28). While difficult to measure outcome objectively, its impact, as indicated by a questionnaire on how students and graduates view the issues involved in illness and patient care, appears to have been appreciable (29). In other schools, especially in the immediate post-World War II period, similar efforts were launched, and while some flourished briefly, most soon faded away under the competition of more glamorous and acceptable biomedical careers.…”

A contextual history of the behavioral sciences in family medicine revisited.

“…In 1946, George Engel initiated the “Medical-Psychiatric Liaison Program” at the University of Rochester with the goal of training students, residents, and fellows in the “combined areas of medicine and psychiatry” (Schmale, Greene, Reichsman, Kehoe, & Engel, 1964, p. 5). Central features of the program were Engel’s systems framework and the focus on an “open-ended, patient-oriented medical interview” (p. 7).…”