Impediments to Alcohol Education.

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Two major forces mitigate against alcoholism education within the medical school curriculum. One relates to the structure and organization of academic medicine with its emphasis on disease states and pathophysiology; sophisticated and technologically complex diagnostic and treatment modalities; and an acute illness, cure-oriented focus rather than a chronic illness, adaptational approach to illness. The 2nd constellation of factors relates to the alcoholism field''s failure to identify with other issues in medical education that similarly challenge the Flexnerian curriculum; the lack of a conceptual basis for defining the physician-alcoholism specialist in relation to other medical disciplines; the clinical treatment field''s competing craft and professional orientations; and the absence of a scientific vocabulary suited to the existing biopsychosocial paradigms. These impediments could be overcome if the alcoholism field defined the model for managing chronic illness that is implicit in alcoholism treatment.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: