Teaching the Social Component of Medicine *

Yale University School of Medicine has recognized for several years the importance of emphasizing throughout the clinical teaching of the student, the social and public health factors involved in the disease entity itself, as well as in relation to individual patients. Because of this emphasis, the Department of Public Health was organized as one of the basic divisions of the School of Medicine and its program was carefully integrated into the general curriculum. In 1929, as a part of the teaching given by the Department of Public Health, clinical conferences were established for the purpose of "helping medical students to secure a better understanding of the backgrounds of the people with whom they work, of the various community resources available, and of the relation of the physician to the total situation."t In 1933, when the Medical Social Service Department of the New Haven Hospital was established, the medical social worker was invited to participate in these clinical conferences and in the preparation of the case studies by students in their fourth year. Because of the limitation of time of the Social Service Department, only approximately onehalf of the students prepare their case studies with the advice and assistance of the case worker and we believe, for reasons explained later, that the student gains more from the experience when the work is prepared in this way. In this presentation we shall give an illustration of this teaching process when the medical social worker participates in the case study with the student and takes part in the seminar.