A new curriculum being introduced this year in the faculty of medicine at McGill University has some doctors worried that McGill will lose its edge in the world of research and become a “family doctor factory” that will diminish the university’s status.

Some physicians who have been involved with teaching at McGill oppose the direction of the new curriculum, arguing that it cuts back on the foundational science required for medical students and will jeopardize McGill’s long-standing ability to produce high-calibre clinician scientists — doctors who also do research.

But champions of the new program say the new curriculum is necessary in order to produce more family physicians — that the provincial government is actually insisting on it — and that not only will it give students more exposure to family medicine, it will teach them how to learn independently, which is required in the fast-evolving world of medical science.

 

Read the full article from the Montreal Gazette

April 11, 2013