After an intensive process of self-study and self-reflection, we met this past week with the LCME accreditors for our MD program. The results of this review will now be sent by the accreditors to LCME and the Canadian equivalent (CACMS) for a determination of our school's accreditation status. The final result should be available to us in early spring. Although the accreditors do not make a specific recommendation regarding our accreditation status, as part of an exit interview, they do provide the school with a summary of their findings. The Dean and I felt it prudent to provide you with a brief summary of their findings.
It was most gratifying that the survey team indicated three strengths of our school - strengths that should be emulated by other schools across North America. These are, the commitment, involvement, engagement and enthusiasm of both our faculty and of our students for our MD program as well as our core clinical skills program. We have much to be proud of!
The areas of concern were already identified in the self-study process and we are well on our way to repairing these deficiencies. The current process of managing our curriculum and of evaluating it require bolstering. Over this past fall we have defined processes to deal with these complex issues and the findings by the accreditation team confirm that our plan is the correct path to take. Expansion over the past several years has presented us with many challenges and the accreditors felt that further expansion, at least in the short term, would not be prudent. Our teaching facilities are suboptimal and this recognition by the accreditation team will help us attain university support to proceed with the development of new space to allow innovative approaches to teaching.
There were several other minor findings by the team that are easily fixed. These primarily deal with process.
I wish to thank all of you who were either directly or indirectly involved in the preparations for the survey or in the actual review. Your support for our medical school was clearly evident!
Lewis Tomalty
