Last update:
15-Jul-2011

OBJECTIVE Medical education (ME), as a specific field of knowledge related to the processes of medical teaching and learning, is gradually gaining ground in Greece. It does not need to start from scratch, as relevant papers have been already published in the Greek medical literature. The aim of this paper was to list all the articles that refer to ME, published in the journals of the Athens Medical Society: Archives of Hellenic Medicine (AHM) and Archives of Medical Societies (AMS).

METHOD Every single published issue was indexed. After the 4th issue of the 16th volume of ΑΗΜ (July–August 1999) all articles are available on the web (http://www.mednet.gr/archives/). The earlier issues were found either in the Library of Health Sciences of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens or in the Library of the Athens Medical Society. In both cases, the table of contents was first checked, either electronically since July– August 1999 or manually for all previous issues. The abstracts of all articles that initially considered relevant were read and the irrelevant ones were excluded.

RESULTS The first issue of AMS was published in the first trimester of the year 1975. The first issue of AHM, the sequel to AMS, was published in February 1984. Having indexed 36 volumes, 47 articles on ME were found (1.28 per year). The first such article was in the 2nd issue of the 5th volume of AMS (1979) and the last in the 3rd issue of the 27th volume of AHM (2010). During its 9-year period of publication, AMS hosted 16 ME articles (1.8 per year), while AΗM journal has hosted 31 ME articles in its 26 years of publication (1.2 per year). All papers relevant to ME are listed here, including the 6 that have been recently accepted (2010) but not yet published.

CONCLUSIONS Although AMS and AHM are medical and not medical-education journals, ME has found its way into their pages. The listing of ME articles could be helpful to those who intend to work in the field of education of medical students and doctors. The expansion of this indexing to include all other medical journals would contribute to the whole picture of the relevant to Greek bibliography on ME, which should not be ignored by those interested in ME in Greece.

Key words: Archives of Hellenic Medicine, Archives of Medical Societies, Indexing, Medical education, Medical journals.