The latest online issue of the prestigious journal Medical Teacher includes an article by Prof. Ronald Harden, secretary of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE), entitled ‘Ten key features of the future medical school -not an impossible dream’ [ ¹ ]. Given both the calibre of the author and the interest of his article, I have deemed it fitting to devote this editorial to it.

Professor Harden reflects on what medical schools should look like in the future and in his article he lists the characteristics that, in his opinion, they should have in the next five to ten years.

After the successful SPICES model described by the same author in 1984 [ ² ], in which different educational strategies for curricular development were presented, he now addresses how medical schools should go about their future development. To do so, he has taken into account the contributions of the different stakeholders involved, such as teachers, students, graduates and patients. We cannot summarise the entire article in this editorial, but we can outline the ten key characteristics described by Harden.

Firstly, the author suggests the need for medical schools to leave their ivory tower and adapt their curricula to the current and, above all, future health needs of the population as well as to those of the health services by establishing a curriculum that is truly based on competences that allow future graduates to practise a medicine that is suited to those needs.

Secondly, he stresses the need for a change in the role of teachers: from that of mere providers of know­ledge to one of facilitators who offer support to students in their training process.

Thirdly, he insists on the need to achieve vertical integration between basic science and clinical medicine, thereby overcoming once and for all the traditional division between these two periods and faci­litating early contact between students and these clinical aspects. The teaching and learning of the basic sciences must be integrated within the teaching and learning of the clinical sciences.

Harden also points to the need for medical schools to value the key role played by teachers and to recognise good practice and teaching innovation on the same level as research when considering their career advancement.

The article also refers to the fact that, in the future, the student should be considered less as a client and a consumer and more a partner in their learning process, by getting involved in the creation of learning resources and assessment exercises, and even in processes of selecting teaching staff. In the future, students’ must become increasingly involved in the educational process.

The author proposes to have a clear and well-established map for the acquisition of the different competences, to establish flexible curricula that adapt to the students’ individual characteristics (avoiding uniform and rigid curricula) and to make a creative, efficient and understandable use of the new technologies.

In the area of assessment, he states that it is necessary to abandon the compartmentalised assessment of learning and move towards institutional assessment programmes that allow a shift from the traditional paradigm of assessment of learning to assessment for learning.

Finally, he proposes that a growing collaboration be established both internally (among teachers at the different stages of the curriculum and among students, through teamwork) and externally (with different health or educational institutions, with other faculties of medicine, with other educational levels that allow the creation of appropriate relations with different stages of the educational continuum, and with other professions). The medical school of the future will be less self-sufficient and less independent.

As Harden acknowledges, moving to bring about these changes has some obvious difficulties, such as resistance from teaching staff, lack of resources and time, and the concerns and apprehension of students, especially if there is little correspondence between their studies and a possible national final exam, as is the case in Spain. However, as the author states at the end of the article, ’the status quo is not an option’ and therefore all the different stakeholders need to commit themselves to these changes.

From here, I would like to encourage our medical schools to read this article, to compare it with the current reality of their own faculty and to try to initiate, within their possibilities, a process of change in order to be able to face the future successfully