Cumming School of Medicine renews official accreditation for eight years

By Scott Strasser, August 26 2016 —

The Cumming School of Medicine is now officially accredited by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC), paving the way for students to continue studying medicine at the University of Calgary for the next eight years.

Accreditation is a necessary condition for a medical school’s graduates to be licensed as physicians. The U of C’s medicine faculty has maintained accreditation status since 1970.

“Students are only going to want to train at a place that is accredited,” said Cumming School of Medicine dean Jon Meddings. “You have to be accredited to put out medical students. You can’t just open up a community college and say that you’re training physicians.”

Renewing accreditation was a two-year process that cost the Cumming School of Medicine about $1 million. The U of C was one of the first universities in Canada to be assessed under new national standards for medical school accreditation, which came into effect last summer.

The process included addressing 95 AFMC standards, self-examination by faculty members, independent analysis by U of C medicine students and an official evaluation from the Committee on the Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools.

“It’s painful,” Meddings said. “You are asked whether you are compliant or noncompliant with each of these elements and sub-elements. It requires analysis by the faculty, and independent analysis by the students and then they have a site team that comes out and evaluates whether or not your answers are truly correct.”

The Cumming School of Medicine satisfied 97 per cent of accreditation requirements and 100 per cent of requirements directly related to curriculum and student evaluation.

Other medical schools in Canada have struggled to gain or renew accreditation. Meddings says four of the country’s 17 medical schools recently failed in their accreditations.

One example is McGill University. The Montreal-based university’s medicine program was put on probation for 18 to 24 months in June 2015 for failing to satisfy several accreditation requirements.

“Part of it is that the process is very onerous and they’re looking for perfection,” Meddings said. “I think they are overall a bit harsh. Rather than this being a quality-improvement exercise, it’s much more of
a pass or fail exam.”

Meddings gave credit to the work done by U of C medicine students in helping the faculty renew accreditation.

“They did an unbelievable job and got a lot of grief from lots of different angles over the whole thing, which I think was decidedly unfair,” he said. “Not only did the student leaders do a great job on the independent student analysis, they also identified some key parts we were deficient in.”

The U of C is one of just two Canadian universities with a three-year medicine program, alongside McMaster University. The Cumming School of Medicine is also accredited by American standards, which means U of C graduates can practice medicine in either Canada or the United States.

The Cumming School of Medicine has over 450 students.