French medical education: years of change.

In the 1960s medical education in France underwent major changes after nearly a quarter-century of efforts by a few leaders. The reforms were supported by students, externs, and interns but generally were opposed by hospital staff and administration and by those in organized medicine. Following student unrest in the late 1960s and evolving medical education in France and elsewhere in the western world, a new series of changes was introduced, several perhaps of more far-reaching consequence than those of the prior decade. Reviewed here is the impact on French medical education of the expansion in numbers of medical schools and students, introduction of a competitive examination to select students whose numbers are a function of the number of teaching hospital beds available, and governmental plans to effect a 20 percent reduction in the number of medical students by 1980.