Medical Faculties or Medical Academies? Czechoslovak Plans and Discussions in the 1950s
Medical Faculties or Medical Academies? Czechoslovak Plans and Discussions in the 1950s

Summary/Abstract: In post-war Czechoslovakia, the re-organisation of public health care was closely linked to problems and new challenges in organising the academic education in medicine and medical science. Reforms in this area were seen as one of the basic starting points of health care reforms whose aim was to improve the health care and health of the population. Alongside elements such as the nationalisation of health care system, the system at this time focused not only on curative but also preventive medicine and hygiene. Similar trends were at that time in evidence in other countries of the then forming Soviet Bloc.In the early 1950s, medical faculties were in some countries of the Soviet Bloc (Poland, Hungary) removed from the structure of traditional universities and transformed into medical academies. These medical academies were supposed to take over the existing functions of academic faculties of medicine and provide teaching, research, and curative medicine, but newly also preventive care. In other countries (Czechoslovakia, GDR), medical faculties remained part of both the traditional and newly established universities, though their transformation into medical academies had also been discussed.The contribution includes: 1. a brief description of the network of academic medical education in 1945–1950s in countries of the Soviet Bloc (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, GRD, Poland, and Hungary); 2. analysis of reasons why in Czechoslovakia the transformation of faculties into academies was not carried out, while in other countries it was. These reasons include references to the strength of tradition, factual arguments, or ideologically based argumentation pointing to “Soviet models”.

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