EDITORIAL

Why has the "Fundación Educación Médica" decided to devote a special issue of this Journal to the GMER-Project (Global Minimum Essential Requirements) of the IIME (Institute for International Medical Education)?

To provide an answer to this question, it is necessary to recognize first that the medical educational environment is moving into a post-flexnerian era conducted by a great deal of initiatives generated at multiple locations that deserve an analysis which we will not attempt here and now. We would rather refer to a significant event, that will next receive the attention of Educación Médica with another special issue. We are referring to the WFME-Trilogy on "Global Standards for Quality Improvement" recently presented at Copenhagen’s Conference "Global Standards in Medical Education for Better Health Care" (March 15-19, 2003). The first group of WFME Global Standards on Basic Medical Education deals with the institutional Mission and Objectives and refers in forth place to Educational Outcomes. Its basic standard nº 4 reads as follows "The medical school must define the competencies that student should exhibit on graduation in relation to their subsequent training and future roles in the health systems".

The GMER project tackles this question from a global perspective. Wherever a physician has graduated should be recognizable as such and differentiated from any other profession, health related or not. It is necessary to define a global frame of professional traits. But having done so, it is also necessary to be able to assess them. Educational institutions as well as students before graduation should be assessed and adequate (reliable, feasible, acceptable) methods should be developed. The IIME is in the process of attempting it once the conceptual effort to define the "core" of the competencies characterizing the medical profession was formulated, it developed the assessment methodology and is now going to apply them at 8 Chinese medical schools that accepted to be the subjects of this pilot project.

In this special issue of Educación Médica we present the document in Spanish language defining the essential competencies that characterize the medical profession and should become the minimum requirements for any medical schools and its educational outcomes.

We also include a glossary of terms convenient for medical educators as we need to construct a common language of shared concepts to be able to understand us among ourselves.

We hope that in the future, besides the relevant WFME-Global Standards Trilogy, we will be able to offer you the assessment component of the IIME’s GMER-Project.

A. Oriol-Bosch