Dear Colleagues,
As we head into the fall season, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a productive 2014-2015 academic year. It’s already very busy with several major initiatives underway, including the continued rollout of the new MDCM curriculum, the implementation of our new Strategic Research Plan, international partnerships being explored, a historic hospital move on its way, among many, many others.
As part of our regular business, we also have a number of accreditation exercises in progress. As you know, accreditation is a very important external peer review process for all North American faculties of medicine. Simply put, being accredited means we are approved to continue running our Faculty.
This year, we will undergo two major accreditation surveys: one for the undergraduate medical program (February 2015), which will be carried out by the U.S. Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) and the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS); and the second for Continuing Professional Development (March 2015), to be carried out by the Committee on Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME).
As a result, there is a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes, coordinated by our accreditation officer, Natalie Phillips-Elgar, the Faculty lead for undergraduate medical education accreditation, Todd McConnell, the relevant associate and assistant deans, together with well over 100 people in the Faculty, University and hospital community. In these exercises, we must demonstrate our compliance with accreditation standards relating to important aspects of health profession education, such as academic evaluations, the learning environment, diversity, curriculum mapping, clerkship feedback and policies. This list is in no way exhaustive.
Accreditation concerns all of us, and I am asking for everyone’s timely cooperation in responding to any information needs or data questions. One request that applies to all faculty and staff is the completion of a survey on demographics. It is an LCME-CACMS accreditation requirement that medical schools maintain data on faculty, staff and students. The survey is short and takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. All data captured will be pooled for use during the accreditation process to demonstrate compliance with the relevant standard (IS-16). More information about the survey will be provided when circulated. As with all surveys, participation is voluntary, but it is my hope you will take the time to complete it.
If you have questions about any aspect of these or any other accreditation exercises, don’t hesitate to contact: accredofficer.med@mcgill.ca. If we receive strong interest from faculty and staff on this topic, we would be pleased to review it in detail in an upcoming Town Hall.
In the meantime, I would like to thank you for your ongoing commitment to our mission and your hard work, and wish you all an excellent autumn.
Sincerely,
Vice-Principal (Health Affairs)
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Sep242014