 |
Opening Remarks for the First Meeting of the Council on Medical Television
October 15, 1959
MURRAY C. BROWN, M.D.
Director of Professional and Clinical Education, National Institutes
of Health
The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health is pleased to act as host for this first meeting of the Council on Medical Television - an organization with great promise and in which are invested the hopes of many for the rapid realization of television's potential in medical education. The idea of the Council was conceived at a conference here at the Clinical Center on February 28 and March 1 of this year. This invitational conference, sponsored by the Institute for Advancement of Medical Communication and the American Academy of General Practice, was called to meet the obvious need for a coordination of efforts and a pooling of experience by the different types of organizations, agencies, and institutions interested in utilizing television for postgraduate medical education.
The conference proved so helpful and stimulating to the more than 75 invited participants that, as a group, they recommended that a continuing body to be known as the Council on Medical Television be formed, and charged the Institute for Advancement of Medical Communication with responsibility for organizing the Council within the framework of the Institute and otherwise implementing the recommendations of the conference. They also indicated that the composition of the Council should be similar to that which had afforded such a fruitful exchange of ideas and experience at the conference, and that its general purpose should be to serve as a mechanism whereby the resources and experience of all types of organizations could be focused for an effective attack on the problems of using television for postgraduate medical education.
Further specified were certain specific functions for the Council that were not being performed by other organizations. In essence, these were to establish a clearing house for all types of information useful to those engaged in or planning television programs for postgraduate medical education, to evaluate what types of television production and transmission will best meet the varied needs of postgraduate medical education, and to design tests of the effectiveness of postgraduate teaching by television.
The present meeting of the Council represents the culmination of the work carried out in the last seven months to implement these recommendations. An astonishing amount has been accomplished by the newly-born Council and its staff; however, it is for you to evaluate the product.
The keynote speakers were chosen to provide a broad framework for the later deliberations and to put medical television in proper perspective as an instrument with great possibilities for meeting one of the greatest problems faced by medicine today-that of effective, continuing education for practicing physicians and as a part of the current, large-scale efforts toward developing television as a tool for general higher education.