Leading the way toward a socially-accountable medical education system

Fostering a healthy population and a high quality, efficient healthcare system necessitates socially-accountable, purposeful use of resources and active collaboration among all healthcare providers and communities we serve. As we develop our professional identity during our transitions from medical students to resident doctors to independent, practicing physicians, we increasingly understand our essential role as healthcare system stewards. Through our journey, however, we have discovered that our medical education was not designed to support us in becoming health-system leaders. Each level of our medical education is a silo of governance, assessment, examination, and accreditation. While there are institutions and programs that excel at instilling social accountability in their graduates in a meaningful way, these important principles can certainly be expanded to become a more robust component of medical education