Going where no curriculum has gone before...

..oh yes.. there is a Trekkie under, barely under mind you, that professional veneer. And like those intrepid explorers, it's time to consider how we might explore delivering the medical curriculum in a different manner. For the Faculty of Medicine to achieve social accountability, we must look at what we are creating through the current methods and consider other options. Hence my exploration into how we might deliver the curriculum in a different manner, where, by whom, and when, to effect a response to the needs of society in Alberta.

"if at first the idea does not seem absurd.. it is bound to fail" Einstein

How might we deliver the entire three years outside of metro sites in an accredited equivalent model? How might we use a different model within the incredible opportunity known as the South Health Camopus (SHC) or colloquially the "South East Hospital" in Calgary?

Maybe we are not changing what we are doing so much as returning to where the Calgary medical school was intended to originally go. Dr. Cochrane, Founding Dean UC Medical School, notes in his article, CMAJ, 1968, vol 98, pg500, that the increasing likelihood of medical subspecialization called for renewed efforts to suport the then nascient speciality of Family MEdicen. Here we are forty years later echoing the same thoughts.

Over the next 6 months, my intention is to review innovative curricula over North America and in Australia. What are the I.T. supports and the community engagemtn strategies that ensure success? How can the litrature from other Facluties inform our curricular redevelopment?

So moving form delivering babies, house calls and all the joys of the breadth of family practice, I move now to consider a larger picture in response to a larger group of society.