The Sociology of Medical Education: Some Comments on the State of a Field

Abstract

The general purpose of this paper is to review the state of a research field, the sociology of medical education. It is fully 15 years since the field became active, and one can now count at least seven attempts, each with the full thrust of major team research organization and support, to study the processes by which medical students selectively acquire the attitudes and values of the physician's social role. If one looks over all of these studies, seeking the patterns of origin, frames of reference, methods, and results, one finds a wide-ranging discourse on the problem. Up to this point, however, the patterns and polemics remain largely implicit, embedded in a considerable volume of separate research reports. Some stocktaking is evident in two recent reviews8' 94a and several bibliographic reports.94b, 95 113 The view of each, however, is limited, centering on selected themes. Becker and Geer,94 for example, review mainly research on medical student culture, recapitulating the lines of inquiry drawn most completely in the particular research in which they were the principal investigators.31 Bloom8l surveyed only studies which related to certain attitudes involved in socialization for the physician's role. Freidson's bibliography is the most complete.95