Customer Reviews

Keys to the Asylum : A Dean, a Medical School, and Academic Politics

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Dr. Bloomfield, Founder and Dean of a new and innovative medical school at the University of Illinois, describes the challenges and frustrations of creativity within a bureaucratic state system. His description of the hurdles he had to leap, and especially the lack of support (primarily financial) offered to him, would make most people cave in. Balanced with these frustrations is the extraordinary success he was able to achieve. It is a credit to him and to his colleagues that so much was accomplished. And that is what makes the story bearable. I would encourage university administrators and those interested in innovative approaches to medical (and other professional) disciplines to read this book.

This interesting story, part autobiography and full of history, details the incipient days of founding a medical institution. Literally from the ground up, Dr. Bloomfield describes how an idea, great innovation, procuring the funding, and convincing the politicians resulted in the beginning construction. His Part II, "The Act of Creation" goes to the heart of finding the curriculum and the students to use it. Tension and relief bob up and down as the unchartered meets the new sailors. Then the bureaucracy gravitates and its inertia sometimes slows, other time really impedes the progress. Nevertheless, there is something to say for the distillation process, which in the end seems to come up with the right mixture of what should and what could be done.

What comes through the pages is the love for education, the purity of intent that Dr. Bloomfield had. Battling with detractors, some with power and others with jealousy seemed to invigorate his pugnacious side. When he found the good guys, nestled among the many people with whom he had to deal, he had genuine concern for their thoughts and suggestions.

Lessons take many forms and the path to this school showed many roads to take for projects we might consider. Reading about this effort and enjoying the success in the epilogue, I could find many useful suggestions and tactics. Such books bear the signature of the great medical administrators who steered the medical schools in the 60's to 80's in some very troubled times.