The MD Program gears up for an Interim Accreditation Review

For the first time ever, the MD Program is embarking on an Interim Accreditation Process. The Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) recently introduced this interim process to ensure that Canadian medical schools continuously drive quality improvement.

“When you hear the words continuous quality improvement, you might think of some of the recent research on improving patient outcomes, or the development of interventions aimed at mitigating issues of patient safety within health care institutions,” says Dr. Martin Schreiber, Director of UME Curriculum, and the Senior Academic Coordinator of the 2012 self-study. “But continuous quality improvement is also an integral part of what we do in Undergraduate Medical Education and the essence of our accreditation process.”

Canadian medical schools must undergo a full accreditation review every eight years. Our last review took place in May 2012, and in November 2015, we received notification that we are in full compliance with all of the CACMS standards, following several updates. 

“The quality improvement journey is a process that involves each individual in the MD Program,” says Schreiber. “We should all be tremendously proud of our accreditation results.  At the same time, we need to look forward towards our next accreditation visit in spring 2020.  The interim accreditation review is a key part of that process.”

Accreditation standards have been significantly revised since our last review in 2012.  The 128 standards have been reorganized into 12 standards each of which has several elements – 95 in total.

“Over the next several months, we will conduct a detailed self-study, which will provide us with an opportunity to explore our level of adherence to the new standards and to identify areas where we may need to make adjustments to ensure continued compliance,” says Dr. Schreiber, who will be overseeing the self-study with administrative support from Christopher Jones, Accreditation Project Manager.   

The self-study committee will consist of a broad spectrum of education leaders, students, administrative staff and teachers, including several who are at arm’s length from the program. Student representatives will be selected by their peers to participate in the working group, and UME staff will be consulted throughout the process. Faculty members interested in participating in this work, please contact us. 

Following the self-study, an external site visit will take place in March 2017 by Dr. Rob Whyte, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education at McMaster University’s De Groote School of Medicine. 

In contrast to the full accreditation process, the information and recommendations gathered through the interim accreditation review are not shared with the accrediting bodies. They are used internally to make data-driven improvements to the program.

Read more about the IAR process on the CACMS web page.  Periodic updates on the progress of the review will be made available on the Accreditation web page.