Dear Colleagues, Students and Residents,
In May, I wrote to you about the accreditation surveys that were taking place this year. As you know, accreditation is a rigorous quality assurance and external peer review process that applies to all faculty of medicine programs. I am writing today to inform you of the status of our Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) program, surveyed jointly by the U.S. Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) and the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS).
On Monday, I received the final accreditation decision from CACMS based on the survey conducted February 22-26, 2015. CACMS has confirmed that our UGME program is accredited, with probation. In summary, this means we have approximately 18 to 24 months to demonstrate significant progress on the items identified by the LCME-CACMS accreditors, a task that is under way.
As communicated last month, this UGME accreditation exercise was unique because both the outgoing and newly implemented curricula were surveyed. The LCME-CACMS preliminary report this spring highlighted our new MDCM curriculum as a strength, describing it as innovative and patient-centred, and commenting on the commitment of our faculty and staff. Because we are transitioning between curricula, we were not entirely surprised that areas for improvement were also identified. In the final report, of the 132 accreditation standards, we were cited as non-compliant for 24 and compliant with need for monitoring for eight. While the final decision is not what we had hoped, this feedback will help drive our ongoing efforts to strengthen the administrative policies and processes in place.
When we received the preliminary feedback in April, we immediately established a UGME Accreditation Task Force, which has since completed an action plan framework, including timelines and deliverables for each item. The majority of actions in this document will be addressed by December 31, 2015.
Examples of actions include: establish timetables for the Faculty’s strategic milestones; demonstrate effectiveness of the new MDCM curriculum community service learning component; develop more detailed minutes following curriculum-related meetings; transfer mapping of educational objectives to outcomes into newly acquired software; and improve communication of objectives to students and residents.
I, once again, would like to express my deep appreciation to everyone in the Faculty who has been involved in the process, especially given the exceptional context as we transition between curricula, adapt to a major health care reform and partake in a historic hospital move. As Dean, and as a McGill grad, doctor and professor, I am proud to be part of this Faculty and privileged to experience firsthand how passionate our faculty and staff are about training the next generation, and how committed our students and residents are to become the best doctors they can be for their patients.
I have no doubt we will work through this together in our ongoing pursuit of excellence, and I look forward to our next meeting with the LCME-CACMS accreditation team to demonstrate our progress.
Vice-Principal (Health Affairs)
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Presentation (PDF)
2015 Accreditation – Preliminary Action Plan Framework (PDF)
Full Survey – Accreditation Letter (PDF)
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