Students always have many questions and problems during active participation. Here, we report an active learning course (AL) based on problems that medical students encountered in gross anatomy practice. This AL was implemented after the practice, consisting of a lecture, group discussions, resource hours, and presentation session to ensure exploratory learning. Based on a questionnaire survey, 75.1% of the students evaluated the AL as very valuable or valuable, indicating its usefulness. The AL not only complemented the anatomy course, but also directed the students toward other forms of basic and clinical learning. The results indicate that by making use of gross anatomy practice, the AL functions as a hub for horizontal and vertical integrations in medical education.

　There is a growing interest in qualitative research among Japanese clinicians. Many of those who are interested in qualitative research attempt to identify the best method to guide them throughout their research. However, good qualitative research never arises from a method but a researcher's way of looking at reality. This paper, therefore, is based on cultural anthropology that has a long history of conducting qualitative research and illustrates three philosophical attitudes that leverage these clinicians for generating significant qualitative research results. These are: (i) looking at the reality from the perspective of informants, (ii) suspending researchers' ethics and their attempts to control people, such as patients and their families, and (iii) aiming at discovering not the average of the collected qualitative data but a new perspective that can only be found in the research field.

　The education program in all medical schools in Japan has been studied and analyzed every 2 years since 1974 by the curriculum committee of the Association of Japan Medical Colleges. Based on the most recent analysis in 2015, the marked innovation of medical education, such as an integrated curriculum, active learning, and clinical clerkship, was recognized.

　Clinical research skills to answer clinical questions arising in daily clinical practice are necessary to improve the quality of medical care. Since 2014, we have been developing a clinical research educational program including clinical research fellowships for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists at the Department of Clinical Research and Quality Management. This paper reports intermediate educational activities and evaluations.