Saskatchewan medical school put on probation

[Taengoo]

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/saskatchewan-medical-school-put-on-probation/article14713725/

There’s bad news for the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine.

 

It has now been officially put on probation by the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools.

 

The College of Medicine is accredited, but has been on warning of probation for almost two years.

Other problems that have been cited at the school include grading objectives and inadequate student space for study, lounge and lockers.

 

In addition, student performance in national exams is at the bottom of all Canadian medical schools.

[rmorelan]

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/saskatchewan-medical-school-put-on-probation/article14713725/

 

yeah....not exactly promising. I hope they turn this around. Sask deserves a medical school they can be proud of.

[A-Stark]

This is really unfortunate, especially because many of the accreditation criteria have little to do with the student experience. Having said that, this sounds worse than Dal's experience a few years ago (which really was about minutiae and administration) with the LCME (the American accreditation body) rather than CACMS.

 

Anyway, hopefully it will prompt a considerable reform of the curriculum and the addition of resources. Certainly I've worked with a number of residents who graduated from UofS in the past who were all excellent.

[seeking1]

Pragmatically speaking, what does this all mean to the average student/member of the public? They won't be shutting down US med, as far as I can tell.

[hexonu]

Pragmatically speaking, what does this all mean to the average student/member of the public? They won't be shutting down US med, as far as I can tell.

 

I doubt they'll shut it down, the most that can happen is they lose accreditation and no one recognizes your medical degree.

[TheBoss]

I doubt they'll shut it down, the most that can happen is they lose accreditation and no one recognizes your medical degree.

 

Not gonna happen, but it certainly doesn't help people's perceptions of the school.

[hamham]

I doubt they'll shut it down, the most that can happen is they lose accreditation and no one recognizes your medical degree.

 

No way this is gonna happen. U of S still attracts the best minds across the province and across the country. With proper restructuring, they will bounce back. I can bet that if given a shot, every IMG will rather go to U of S for their degree than leave the country.

[nosuperman]

The LCME runs the accreditation for US and Canadians schools. They've beefed up enforcement due to some political issues involving US congress threatening to revoke their authority. They won't shut the program down immediately assuming this is the first strike. Usually they put you on a timeline to become compliant. That said its pretty serious - a massive blemish on the admin (whether its deserved or not) and if the school doesn't get to compliance they could lose accreditation. The effect of this would be inability to apply to residencies (Can AND US) on par with LCME grads - it'd be like graduating from one of those non-accredited foreign schools.

 

Edit: Older article on probation

[ldnk]

Always tough to see something like this. Doing CaRMS research the residency programs have actually looked fairly decent of UofS. It always struck me that the negative perceptions had more to do with location than actual teaching quality. I hope that this is more a case of administrative screw-ups and not actually educational matters.

 

I've had mixed experience with UofS residents, but that's really no different than most other programs. Some are stronger out of the gate than others.

[Innovo]

yeah....not exactly promising. I hope they turn this around. Sask deserves a medical school they can be proud of.

 

I agree. One of the best and most respected plastic surgeon in the city where I'm from went to U of S for med school.