MEDICAL EDUCATION FOR PRIMARY CARE

Teaching primary care is an important, but as yet, incompletely fulfilled responsibility of medical schools. The current surge of interest will not provide the needed personnel if primary care is defined too broadly, and if it is made everybody's business, but nobody's in particular. Primary care must not neglect first-contact care; it must be taught by an independent department which itself practices the full range of primary care services in settings which exemplify such care and which exhibit a team approach. It may be useful to consider a special track leading to primary care which differs from preparation for specialist care.