摘要：FOR ALMOST a decade fourth-year medical students applying to a postgraduate training program in internal medicine at Boston VA Medical Center have been asked how they will maintain their fund of medical knowledge after completing their formal training. Responses to this question are variable, but students recognize the need for continuing medical education. All but the most naive acknowledge that ongoing study is an essential component of a career in medicine. Intelligent and highly motivated students express concern that the continuing expansion and complexity of the scientific base of medicine may eventually surpass their ability to cope with the growing body of medical information. For many students it is only mildly reassuring to learn that keeping current is also a major worry of academic physicians. In general, neither medical students nor their teachers have been specifically trained to deal with information management, defined in this context as the acquisition, organization, storage, and retrieval of information; the appearance of departments of medical information science and graduate programs in information science is a new response to this deficiency.
