A century ago the Flexner Report revolutionized medical education by focusing on mastery of biological and physical sciences. The standard of patient care in the 21st century goes far beyond these parameters and the authors call for medical education to catch up and even lead the way toward the future.

The authors write: "Given the increasing pressures on medical educators to cover more and more information in less time and the parallel challenge for practicing physicians of seeing more patients and having less time to do it, one might ask whether there is room in the (medical school) curriculum and whether we can afford the expense of teaching a whole range of additional patient and relationship-centered skills that integrate mind, body and spirit. We would ask, based on the best available evidence and consequences of what happens when patient and relationship-centered skills are absent, can we afford not to?"

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