Shaping the future-ready doctor: a first-aid kit to address a gap in medical education.

Abstract

To the Editor: With the advent of Industry 4.0 (i.e., the fourth industrial revolution) came a paradigm shift built on core work-related skills that further dictated the emergence of a "new" world, with diverse professional disruptors and innovators at the forefront. In an effort to address this new paradigm, recommendations in higher education for the "creation of more practical and applied curricula" and for enhancing "relationships between higher education institutions, employers, and other partners . . ." have been proposed. To create a level playing field for global healthcare sectors of the future, Morrison outlined the diverse roles a future-ready doctor will be expected to uphold. Thus, medical education has to evolve to mold a holistic future-ready doctor who can treat and continuously innovate. To this end, medical schools are challenged to amalgamate basic medical sciences with clinical sciences seamlessly and to adapt their curricula to yield millennial physicians who are able to respond to and act on cur-rent and emerging trends in healthcare. In addition to building on Flexner's legacy to ensure progressive pedagogical approaches, innovative means to incorporate the active components of human presence, comparable to that of core work-related attributes (i.e., heart - values, head - knowledge, mind - qualities, and hands - skills), need to be developed. However, it is undeniable that traditional classroom instruction alone cannot produce these characteristics of the future-ready doctor. (Continued)