Campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine Kicks off; We Need a Deep and Broad International Debate to Begin

The BMJ and a range of partners, including other journals published by the BMJ Publishing Group, the Lancet, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dutch Journal of Medicine, Medical Journal of Australia, Croatian Medical Journal, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and many others have initiated a project to bring people together to debate whether the existing structure of academic medicine is still fundamentally sound and, if not, to propose alternatives to it. (1) I have taken on the challenge of coordinating this project, and I invite readers to join me in this enterprise. To achieve the project's broad goals (box 1) we begin from the position that "more of the same" is not enough. We need to be free to propose radical changes to the fundamental nature of academic medicine (is the balance between bench and applied research all wrong?); its name (should it become "academic health care" or should we drop "academic"?); its home base (are hospitals the wrong place to train doctors?); its relation to service (why are they so often far apart?); its methods of training and certification (should medical education be lecture based and far shorter?); and its responsibilities (should it be held accountable for inequities in health care at the global level?). Our approach will be inclusive and is designed to ensure a broad input of opinions. Rather than allowing the process to be taken over by a few experts with vested interests, we will build consensus by inviting a range of global stakeholders to contribute their views. We are especially interested in the views of the "customers" of academic medicine--patients, politicians, the public. Anyone can contribute their views right now, as a rapid response to this article at bmj.com In addition, our project web page is under development (www.bmj.com/academicmedicine), and this will contain regular updates, news, and collected resources. Box 1. Goals of the project Development of strategy on the following issues: * How should academic medicine look in the 21st century * How can we increase the impact of academic medicine on the rest of medicine and on health and health care * How should academic medicine be positioned internationally within medicine and also in the wider intellectual arena * How can recruitment to and job satisfaction of those working in academic medicine be increased Box 2. Four advisory groups * Perspectives forum--patients, health professionals, government representatives, and medical unions * Ad hoc consultants--providing systematic reviews and other factual summaries about the efficacy of different educational, organisational, and administrative approaches, and trends in human resources in academic medicine * Communications consortium--disseminating surveys, drafts, and reports to everybody who is joined up to the campaign or may want to give input * International advisory panels--deans and chairs whose support could help establish funding, profile, and implementation; also used as an ongoing sounding board The proposed structure is as follows. …