Preparing public health leaders for the 1990s

Public health leadership is urgently needed throughout the world. In most local, provincial, and national jurisdictions, such responsibility has been assumed by doctors of clinical medicine, who know much about treatment of disease in individual patients but very little about prevention of disease and promotion of health in populations or the management of health systems. Effective leadership in public health requires a new profession, with generalized education in the basic tools of social analysis, health and disease in populations, promotion of health and prevention of disease, and health care systems and their management. More than 40 distinct scientific subjects have been developed in these fields over the years, and current faculties are qualified to teach them. To provide this education would require about 5 years of academic and field studies, after a bachelor's degree. Schools of public health now train doctoral-level specialists who are prepared in the PhD tradition for academic posts. These schools should also develop educational programs for doctoral-level generalists who are qualified to provide community health leadership at local, provincial, and national levels.

Allied health and the dilemma of nontraditional doctorates

Opportunities to acquire doctoral degrees through nontraditional means have proliferated in recent years. These opportunities offer master-level allied health professionals a chance to obtain doctoral degrees without major interruptions in their careers or the need to leave their place of employment. However, many question the comparability of these degrees to those obtained through traditional programs. This report examines various types of nontraditional programs and attempts to assess their acceptance by deans of allied health programs based in academic health centers. Of ten deans surveyed, eight stated that they would consider candidates with nontraditional doctorates for faculty appointment. Two had nontraditional doctoral faculty on staff and have had no problems with promotion or tenure of those individuals. Only one indicated that promotion and tenure would not be possible for faculty possessing nontraditional degrees. The implications for allied health faculty possessing nontraditional degrees are explored in light of official and unofficial university policies, and an approach is suggested for junior faculty considering the nontraditional doctoral option.

Another ten years in education

Opening remarks by the President, Sir John Walton: The Lloyd Roberts Lecture is one of the major events of the Society year. It is given in rotation at the invitation of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Medical Society of London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and this year it is our turn. For those of you who do not know who Lloyd Roberts was — he died in 1920, at which time he was the Consulting Obstetric Physician, a very modern term indeed, to Manchester Royal Infirmary because, although he practised throughout his professional life as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, he was also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and was particularly interested in medical aspects of obstetrics and gynaecology. He was one of that long line of medical polymaths who distinguished British medical affairs in the last century and in the early part of this century in that he had a major interest in literary matters. Quite apart from publishing his very well known Students' Guide to the Practice of Midwifery, he also published a revised edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, and was responsible for writing a major work on The Scientific Knowledge of Dante. A great collector of art treasures, including a specially fine collection of mezzotints, glass and books, he was in many, many ways a man of outstanding breadth of interest and culture. One of the most interesting things that was said about Lloyd Roberts in a very long obituary after he died was that, even if he had died thirty years earlier, his biography would have had a very large sale.

Hospital work done, he was to be found by midday standing, always standing, compact, alert, close cropped, by his consulting room fire with a glass of milk warming in the fender and, amongst the instruments on the mantelpiece, there were walnuts, which he cracked at intervals with explosive violence. These served for lunch.

One of his most famous quotes, which apparently has always been remembered, was that he used to say he was not a consultant but ‘a general specialist, with a leaning towards women’, and his definition of gynaecology was ‘anything either curable or lucrative’. But everyone said that he was a born healer and it did people good merely to see him, so that he was clearly one of the most notable members of our profession of the day. Now, who could we have chosen better than Baroness Warnock to deliver this year's Lloyd Roberts Lecture?

Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, subsequently Fellow and Tutor of Philosophy at St Hugh's College and then later Headmistress of Oxford High School for six years, she has chaired many special enquiries of particular interest to this profession, such as the Committee of Enquiry into Special Education. She served on the Advisory Committee on Animal Experiments as Chairman until recently and we know very well of her work in chairing the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology. She has also found the time to write widely on Existentialism, Imagination and Education, and other topics. Now, if there has been an occasion when simultaneously a husband and wife have been respectively Head of House, one in Oxford and the other in Cambridge, then as a very new boy at Oxford it is not something which I personally have been aware. Interest in education makes it particularly fitting that she should have chosen tonight, following upon the lecture given in this series some fifteen years ago by Lord James of Rusholme, to talk about ‘Another ten years in education’.

Doctoral student selection in one professional psychology program

The determinants of the selection decision for applicants (N = 239) to one clinical Doctor of Psychology program during a 3-year period were examined, and relationships among selection variables measured at the time of application and program performance variables measured 2 years later for those matriculated were determined. Results and discussion also illuminate the determinants of ratings made of applicants based on reading written application materials and determinants of ratings made of applicants based on personal interviews. Recommendations for selection procedures in similar practitioner-oriented clinical psychology doctoral programs and for future research are offered.

Training in geropsychology at the doctoral level: 1984

To study type and amount of training in geropsychology available to students in APA-approved doctoral programs in clinical and counseling psychology, a questionnaire was mailed to all such programs in 1984. Response rate was 71 of 132 (59%) for clinical programs and 27 of 37 (73%) for counseling programs. Very little difference was found between responses of clinical and counseling programs and between this 1984 survey and one conducted in 1975-76. There seems to be a very small increase in training opportunities for psychology students in geropsychology in 1984 at the doctoral level.

A comparison of impact of undergraduate and graduate occupational therapy education on professional productivity

This article presents an account of the evolutionary changes in occupational therapy graduate education at the University of Southern California (USC) in response to the increasing professional demands and the expanding knowledge base of the field. The contention that undergraduate and graduate education represented by these changes would result in different student products was tested. A questionnaire survey was used to assess the responses of 189 former undergraduate and graduate occupational therapy students of USC on issues relating to professionalism, leadership, attitudes, and scholarly contributions. Results of this study support the theory that graduate education of a specific kind and quality enhances the professionalization of occupational therapy more so than does undergraduate education.

Review of the postbaccalaureate degree for professional entry into physical therapy

The American Physical Therapy Association has endorsed the postbaccalaureate entry-level degree for the physical therapy profession. This article reviews the purpose of entry-level professional training and contrasts various options of educational systems with degree structures. Professional economic, political, and educational factors are considered. After analysis of these variables, the Master of Physical Therapy degree is my recommendation for the postbaccalaureate entry-level degree for physical therapists.