Full accreditation for medical school
U of S college has overhauled curriculum, research, salaries
The University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine has achieved full accreditation, a decision its dean says will help build the institution’s reputation and improve the school’s ability to recruit the country’s brightest minds.
The U of S College of Medicine has the dubious distinction of being the only North American medical school to have been placed on probation twice: In 2002 and 2013. Its last probationary status was lifted in 2015.
Members of the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) toured the college in the fall of 2017 and spoke with faculty, staff and students about issues relevant to accreditation, including admission procedures, curriculum, classroom infrastructure and supports available to students.
The results of that successful accreditation visit were shared with the College of Medicine on Monday and made public on Tuesday.
Dean Preston Smith said he was “pleased” with the results, but not surprised.
The college has been implementing an aggressive restructuring plan over the last five years in order to prevent an unprecedented third probation. Under this plan, the college overhauled its curriculum, increased funding for research, changed payment structures in order to attract more medical doctors to teach at the college and revamped its leadership team.
The college launched its new curriculum in 2014; the first cohort of students to complete their four-year undergraduate medical doctorate degrees under this program wrote their licensing exams this spring.
Once the college gets feedback on how its students did, Smith said he will need to provide the CACMS with a written report — one of a handful of reports it will need to provide the accreditors to give them information that wasn’t available at the time of the fall visit.
Smith said the CACMS is not as concerned about how Saskatchewan medical schools stack up against their counterparts at other schools, but rather wants to know whether the college has plans in place to change the curriculum to address areas in which students may be weak.
Smith said the college is committed to continually updating its curriculum to best serve its students and is making sure its faculty get professional development opportunities to see how medical education is delivered at other institutions.
“There were structural reasons that got us into the trouble we were in with accreditation, but there was also many years of just continuing with the old education program and things were getting stagnant,” he said.
“Well, things will get stagnant again unless we’re actually taking those faculty and getting them exposed to everything that’s happening in medical education, so trying to be really forward thinking on the medical education side.”
Smith said he hopes the college’s graduates will continue to perform better on the licensing exam — something he said could be helped by accreditation.
“Accreditation success means more and more of the best students want to come here and so you build confidence, you get great students and your scores go up in the long run as well,” he said.
If the CACMS is satisfied with reports provided by the College of Medicine, the accreditors may not visit the school again for another eight years.
Smith said that would be great news.
“A visit is a lot of work that distracts my team from being able to do the work of making the college better all the time,” he said.
Leading up to the fall’s accreditation visit, the medical college voiced concern that insufficient funding from the provincial government could jeopardize its accreditation.
In its March 2017 budget, the Saskatchewan Party government slashed funding to the U of S by 5.6 per cent and instructed the institution to direct $20 million of its $294-million operating grant to the College of Medicine.
That decision was later reversed. The government awarded an additional $20 million to the medical college in September 2017 with the aim of helping it secure accreditation.
Smith said the provincial government’s continued investment in the medical college is important for it to remain accredited.
“The accreditors want follow up on our funding stability,” he said. “(The accreditors’) question to us was, ‘Well, how do you know the $20 million is permanent?’ I said, ‘The minister promised me it was.’ ”
Smith said he is confident the province will continue to provide stable funding to the medical school even now that the threat of a third probation is not looming.
“It’s a pretty ineffective club in the long run to be always playing the probation card with government and saying, ‘Give us enough money to keep bad news away.’ Rather, we want to say, ‘Here’s the return on investment from a really high-performing college of medicine,’ ” he said.
“Now we’re a winning team. I think the province should see even better reason why they want to continue our funding the way it is,” he added.