The distinctive feature of the intellectual history of twentieth century medicine is its close identification with science. While the practical benefits of that identification are indisputable, we are yet to assess its impact on the more human dimensions of the medical enterprise. Indeed, there is genuine concern that capitulation to a predominantly scientific or technological ethos might endanger the “humanistic” traditions of the profession.

Rightly or wrongly, many of the perceived deficiencies of scientific medicine—its objectivity, specialization, and even its bureaucratization—are ascribed to an overinfatuation with high technology and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Somehow,...

Approximately thirty years ago, the World Health Organization defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease.” While this definition has its share of critics, none has offered a fully satisfactory substitute. The most likely explanation is that, while there is little disagreement that health is more than the absence of disease, finding a positive rather than a negative way of expressing this has proved elusive. In terms of what follows, health can be considered as the ability to achieve and maintain somatic, psychic, and social harmony with an ever-changing...

The growing importance in the twentieth century of continuing education in higher education is related in part to the change in American society from simple agrarian to a very complex technological society which could not function without a highly skilled vocational and professional work force. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand for education in this country over the past two hundred years. At the time of the founding of this country, formal educational needs were minimal and were largely limited to preparation of ministers, physicians, and lawyers. Essential work skills were learned from elders and apprenticeships. As the nation...

Community colleges across the land have become increasingly involved in providing education for allied health personnel as the number of colleges and their size have increased. Of equal importance has been a steady shift in the curriculum focus of many community colleges. Over the past decade they have put less emphasis on preparation for transfer to baccalaureate programs in other institutions and assigned ever more resources to career education for direct entry into the work force. The shift has provided the community colleges with an educational capability for occupations training seldom enjoyed to the same degree by other postsecondary institutions....

This chapter is about collaboration between and among allied health educators and their respective institutions. It is drawn from both a review of selected literature on the subject of cooperative arrangements among educational institutions and from the personal experience of the authors, the chief allied health administrative officers at their respective institutions contiguously located in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

This essay was not designed to be a full treatise on collaboration among educational institutions, but is a general overview of the subject with specific attention given to examples and discussion pertinent to health related institutions and programs....

“In the interest of efficiency and productivity, the sharing of resources will be both a necessary and attractive characteristic of health education in the future. Likewise, it can be anticipated that interdisciplinary education in the classroom and in the patient care setting will eventually become routine. Academic planning by one profession in isolation is a luxury of the past.”¹ Alvin Morris, Executive Director of the Association of Academic Health Centers, presented this thought to the Institutional Members Spring Meeting of the American Society of Allied Health Professions in April of 1977. Morris was establishing the necessity for interdisciplinary education from...

At the risk of creating an overschematicized simplification, I am emboldened to compare the challenge of allied health administration to that of those would be leaders who have struggled for years to unify the Balkan states. Think if you will of the continuing plight of Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Once secure members of the Turkish and Austro-Hungarian Empires, these nations now cling tenaciously to their separate identities while being continously buffeted by political and economic maelstroms generated by their more powerful neighbors in Europe and Asia. Once united, these nations are now separated by barriers created by...

The National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974, Public Law 93-641, was signed by the President on January 4, 1975. This action evolved from the experience of Hill-Burton, Regional Medical Programs (rmps) and Comprehensive Health Planning (chps). The act attempted to combine the more desirable features of these programs for state and local planning and development. The law authorized transitional funds through fiscal year 1976 for state chps, rmps, and Experimental Health Service Delivery Systems (ehsds). Where there were strong chps, there are, in most instances, the better Health Service Agencies today.

The preamble of pl 93-641 stated,...

The primary care of patients and their families seems at long last to have achieved its proper place in the hierarchy of health care in our nation. Few among the health professionals and practically no one among the laity would presently deny the importance of primary care. What seems at issue in the reemergence is exactly what the dimensions of such care are and who are its practitioners.

It is our contention and the purpose of this essay to posit that these issues will gradually fade as we continue to experiment with a variety of models of delivery and through...