摘要：In 1969, this year justfifty years ago, afirst group oftwenty medical students entered a newly establishedmedical school at McMaster University in Hamilton,Ontario, Canada. They were to be part of an educational experiment that profoundly changed the face ofmedical education worldwide. This experiment wascalled problem-based learning (PBL). Lectures werelargely abolished and students worked in small groupson“problems” guided by a tutor. Individual study waslargely self-directed and based a set of learning issuesderived from the discussion of the problem. In addition,knowledge from the basic sciences—physiology, biochemistry, anatomy–was to be integrated with theclinical sciences. This implied that students wereconfronted, from the beginning of their studies, withmedical problems around which they acquired relevantknowledge.
