Trends in the development of medical education

A brand new model of medical education has been created worldwide through continuous reform during these decades. In the future, features in other educational fields will be selected and integrated in medical education, and these will push its innovation and then influence the development of other educational fields. Several excellent reviews as well as future perspectives in well-known speeches as well as in the literature have given us important messages about the trends in the future development of medical education. In this article we will focus on the following eight issues. 1) learn and transfer the knowledge, skills or attitudes effectively, 2) learn with simulators, the application, effectiveness and limitations, 3) define the professional competence, and its importance in the future career development, 4) extend the educational principles from the pre-graduate to the post-graduate training programs (continued and life-long learning), 5) use of effective competences assessment tools, 6) teaching and assessments of medical ethics: present status and future perspectives, 7) paradigm shift of the medical educational objectives: from the students/doctors competences to the patient outcomes, and 8) challenges for medical education.