Quality is one of the most important components of services rendered for child health. While innate ability and on-the-job learning may result in the production of outstanding achievement on the part of an individual or organization, by and large the quality of a given service may be measured satisfactorily by the fundamental training of those who conduct it.
The conduct of child health services comes far from resting solely in the hands of the physician, still further from those of the pediatrician alone. Nevertheless the physician forms, if not the heart, at least an aorta, through which must flow, if but for an instant, the whole volume of child care. Hence the size and strength of the group which constitute such a vessel become a matter of primary concern in a study having to do with the health of children. With this concept in mind, a Study of Pediatric Education became an integral part of the Study of Child Health Services organized by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In undertaking such a study, there was full realization of the importance of other groups as well as of the inseparable interrelation between medical training as a whole and that for pediatrics. Since it was not possible to cover the entire field, the Study confined itself to a survey of the most important segment; namely, the pediatric training of undergraduate medical students and the graduate training of physicians planning to devote their lives to the care and treatment of children.
The field work is complete. It consisted of visits to and surveys of the pediatric departments of 70 medical schools in the United States and of 9 in Canada, the latter carried out by the Canadian Society for the Study of Diseases of Children. Analysis of the material has just started.
Student Enrollment
The problems of student enrollment are not primarily the concern of those engaged in the teaching of pediatrics nor of an organized group of pediatricians, but they are shared equally with other departments and other medical organizations.
