Learning Theories and Medical Education

Working in UF's own Health Science Center, I have an interest in health science and medical education. Most medical schools divide the 4 year education into components consisting of 2 years of basic sciences and 2 years of clinical clerkships. The 2 year basic science classes are primarily taught in behaviorist fashion with emphasis on didactic lectures and rote memorization.

Unlike this traditional approach to teaching the basic sciences, Mercer University School of Medicine (my alma mater, but I'm not biased I swear) uses a problems based program. In this approach all the knowledge acquired in a typical medical school during the basic science years is learned by studying patient cases. Here's an interesting article about using case or problem based learning in medical education -- Problem Based Learning in American Medical Education: An Overview.

Now that we are constructing an understanding of the central paradigms of education and instructional theories, what paradigm do you think the Mercer program is primarily using and why? What influence do you think the problem based program has on the education of medical students? Would you feel comfortable seeing a doctor who learned basic sciences using this alternative approach? For my part, I think I would feel more comfortable with a doctor who learned under this method because the problem based focus encourages problem solving skills and a more holistic understanding of the basic science concepts.

If you're interested in medical education, here's another good article comparing clinical clerkship scores of students in lecture based and problem based programs of the same institution --
Differences between students in problem-based and lecture-based curricula measured by clerkship performance ratings at the beginning of the third year