Imre Magyar, the last great representative of the Korányi School, who was appointed as the director and professor of the Internal Medicine Clinic I of the Budapest University of Medicine in 1965, emphasised in his inaugural address that from the three closely intertwined functions of the university clinic, i.e. patient care, research and medical training and education, he considers the latter the most important. The study intends to present that Imre Magyar, as an absolute educator, pursued this objective until his retirement in 1980. In his inaugural address he regarded lectures given by teachers of higher calibre with the intention to teach students medical thinking as one of the most important components of education. He even looked at lectures rather as seminars, never forgetting to make presentations on patients. Textbooks were meant for home education. Magyar, however, also “provided assistance” with this for medical students. His functional holistic thinking made it possible that medicine as specialised sciences be once again summarised as a uniform internal medicine dealing with the whole individual in his textbooks co-written by Petrányi and used in medical training for decades. Making a concrete connection with the patient, appropriate verbal and metacommunications, empathy, understanding and showing appropriate medical behaviour were, in his view, prerequisites for becoming a doctor. That is why he was concerned about the function of the doctor’s character in healing, and conducted investigations also described in this study on several occasions in relation with the cultivation of medical students. That is why Imre Magyar, who saw the big picture of education, emphasised the vital role of literature, arts and music in a doctor’s life.
An ambulatory care internal medicine rotation for third-year medical students