The Beersheba Experiment and the Medical Field in Israel, 1974–1981

This article returns to the graduates of the faculty of Health Sciences first cohort, who started their medical studies in October 1974, in order to re-evaluate the outcomes of this experiment. We argue that the faculty’s ability to promote a new kind of pedagogy and a new model for professional conduct, exceeded its ability to affect the structural constraint of the countrywide distribution of medical services. It managed to create a diverse student body and managed to affect its graduates’ clinical practice, but its ability to persuade them to pursue family medicine remained limited. This article contributes to the social history of the faculty by supplementing students’ experience to existing research on its foundation and supplements decades of research on the Beersheba experiment, further detailed below, with a long-term historical perspective. Our research is based on both interviews and archival research.