Establishing learning objectives to guide the design, content, and conduct of an educational program is an important principle supported by educational theory and practice. Since publication of the Final Report of the Commission on Medical Education (the Rappeleye Commission) in 1932, the AAMC has periodically called on medical schools to develop learning objectives for their curricula. Indeed, in the early 1950s the Association itself developed a set of objectives to assist medical schools in changing their curricula in response to the changes in medical practice occurring after World War II. Over the next two decades, however, the purpose of medical student education changed; medical school was no longer intended primarily to prepare physicians for the independent practice of medicine. As a result, the objectives developed in the early 1950s became outdated and new objectives were needed.

In 1981, the AAMC created a panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine (GPEP Panel) to develop strategies for improving the general professional education of the physician. The Association hoped that the GPEP Panel would lead not only to agreement on the knowledge and skills that all physicians should possess to practice medicine in the 21st century, but also would promote debate on the personal qualities, values, and attitudes that those pursuing careers in medicine should possess. In its final report in 1984, the panel asserted that all physicians regardless of specialty should possess a common foundation of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values, and recommended that each medical school faculty specify the attributes appropriate for students graduating from its school and adopt learning objectives for the curriculum consistent with those attributes. In keeping with this recommendation, in 1985 the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) added to the accreditation standards for the medical student education program a requirement that "a medical school must define its objectives and make them known to faculty and students."

In the early 1990s the AAMC sought to learn how schools had responded to the recommendations of the GPEP Panel and other blue ribbon panels that had been established in the 1980s to review the state of medical education. This initiative - Assessing Change in Medical Education: The Road to Implementation (ACME-TRI) - revealed that few medical schools had delineated a coherent and comprehensive set of learning objectives for the medical student education program. To remedy this situation, the ACME-TRI recommended that the AAMC establish a task force to develop a set of goals and objectives that could guide individual schools in establishing objectives for their own programs. The MSOP fulfills this recommendation.

This report marks the conclusion of the initial phase of the MSOP. Subsequent reports will be issued during the second, or implementation, phase of the project. In issuing this report, the Association reaffirms its longstanding commitment to the principle that the faculty of each medical school, working with the school's dean, is responsible for determining the learning objectives and specifying the curriculum for the school's educational program. The Association believes that the objectives set forth in this report can guide medical schools in developing their own objectives that reflect an understanding of the implications for medical practice and medical education of "evolving societal needs, practice patterns, and scientific developments." We hope that medical schools, during the second phase of the project, will develop their own learning objectives and use them to review and, if necessary, reform their curricula to ensure that their students have opportunities to achieve those objectives.