Chairman's Message

“…undergraduate medical education, the singularly distinctive mission of schools of medicine, has become in many institutions somewhat of a byproduct of their principal business lines of research and clinical services delivery.” (Korn, 1996)

“Medical schools, once devoted primarily to educating medical students, have evolved into complex academic medical centers (AMCs), some of which place a greater emphasis on research and the clinical business than on educating future physicians.”  (Watson, 2003).

The primary mission of medical schools is in the educational preparation of today’s medical students to become the competent, caring and ethical doctors of the 21st century. Over the past several decades, as clearly articulated in the above two quotations, strong forces of change have eroded the primary educational mission of medical schools to varying degree and extent. It is in this context of the many challenges and threats to the pre-eminent status of medical schools to effectively sustain its educational mission that we have specially chosen the theme “Energising the Educational Mission of Medical Schools” for our 6th Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC 2009).

We extend a warm invitation to all medical educators and administrators who have the special privilege of ensuring and sustaining the educational mission of their medical schools to come and join in the deliberations in this special forum APMEC 2009 which, we hope, will offer participants the opportunity of meeting with old friends and making new ones.   

Most of all, I hope, our sharing and learning together at APMEC 2009 will help us all to enhance and further promote excellence in medical education in our region and beyond.

See you at APMEC 2009.