ASSESSING THE RLEATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEDICAL EDUCATION AND SUBSEQUENT PERFORMANCE

This paper raises questions about the feasibility of conducting well‐designed and executed research to relate practice performance of physicians to their medical education. The longitudinal study efforts underway at McMaster University's medical school are used to illustrate the problems that confront educators interested in studying the impact of a curriculum on the later professional activities of its graduates. The possible role of less precise, but more comprehensive, data sources that describe career paths and patterns of physicians is discussed. These logistic and methodologic difficulties confront investigators interested in determining the impacts of complex innovations in higher education generally.