The proposed educational reforms of the undergraduate medical school curriculum and the postgraduate clinical training system

Along with the rapid advances in the fields of life science and technology, the knowledge that the medical students are expected to acquire has expanded in many areas, and also many subjects have been subdivided into special fields, thus resulting in a situation in which the knowledge that doctors obtain at medical school is quickly becoming less uniform. Therefore, the introduction of a standardized medical school curriculum and postgraduate training systems has been discussed over the past several years. The Departments of Education and Technology and Welfare and Labor have started to draw up new curricula and systems in order to ensure the quality of the medical doctors licensed to practice medicine in Japan. These reforms require appropriate changes in the educational programs for such fields as clinical pathology and laboratory medicine on both the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels. This workshop has been organized to introduce the findings of both original and advanced trials being performed by medical schools and educational hospitals with different backgrounds. At first, the progress of these reforms is summarized in order for the participants to obtain a better understanding of the undergoing reforms.