Description of the Foundations

Medical Foundation 1

Medical Foundation Director: Dr. Marianne Talman

Medical Foundation 1 addresses the first of the major concept themes in the curriculum, that of oxygen supply and exchange. In addressing problems that arise from inspired air right through to oxygen at the cellular level, students will learn much related to the respiratory, hematologic and cardiovascular systems.

Medical Foundation 2

Director: Dr. William Harper

This is the first of the two Foundations that addresses aspects of homeostasis, particularly that of energy balance, including issues related to the GI tract, endocrine system and nutrition.

Medical Foundation 3

Director: Dr. Deborah Marcellus

This Foundation covers the second part of homeostasis, including the balance of acid and base, blood pressure and renal function and then goes on to address reproduction and pregnancy and a number of issues in genetics related to reproduction.

Medical Foundation 4

Director: Dr. Ann Benger

This Foundation addresses host defence, which includes immunology and infectious disease, and then moves on to look at neoplasia and the genetics of neoplasia.

Medical Foundation 5

Director: Dr. Alfred Cividino

This Foundation covers the concepts of movement control and interacting and communicating, which includes the locomotor system, the nervous system and behaviour. Aspects of human development will run through all of the five Medical Foundations.

Professional Competencies

Directors: David Smith and Karen Trollope-Kumar

The Professional Competencies curriculum is an exciting new addition to the MD Program.

Interwoven throughout the 3-year program is a rigorous new curriculum that enables the student to pull together the complexities of clinical practice: ethics, communication skills, self-reflection, health systems, interprofessional teamwork ... the layers of meaning and being that well-rounded doctors of tomorrow must possess. Clinical skills will be introduced early and often, a hallmark of McMaster's patient-centred curriculum. Patient partners and more hands-on clinics - as well as enhanced resources in the clinical learning centre - round out the offerings.

This curriculum will be anchored by a weekly tutorial session led by an MD and non-MD team of facilitators who will remain with their group throughout pre-clerkship.

In addition to this, the Professional Competencies stream will be purposefully interdigitated with the core curriculum, with many of its elements being addressed in Conceptual Foundations tutorial sessions.

Key Domains:

The Professional Competencies stream is a competency-based, longitudinal curriculum with a focus in seven key domains:

 

Clerkship

Director: Dr. Robert Whyte

While the Clerkship will be firmly linked to the pre-clerkship concept-based curriculum and will include continuing delivery of the Professional Competencies curriculum, this is now the time for students to participate in the direct care of patients as they learn about the management of health and illness. The tutorial cases are now real patients or populations. Students become self-sufficient in contemporary medicine, able to sense when today’s medicine becomes out-of-date by adopting good habits of learning and assessment. The Clerkship program consists of rotations in medicine, which includes geriatrics, surgery, family medicine, anesthesia, psychiatry, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology and emergency medicine. There is also elective time, one half of which must be spent in clinical activity. The compulsory components of the Clerkship are carried out in teaching practices and in all the teaching hospitals in the Hamilton region; in community hospitals, including those in St. Catharines, Guelph, Brantford, Burlington, Niagara Falls and the Kitchener-Waterloo region, and in association with the Northwest Ontario Medical Program. Students are expected to travel outside the Hamilton area for clerkship rotations. It is anticipated that further rotations will be developed in rural, under-serviced and remote areas. The elective experience can be spent in various activities utilizing local, regional or distant resources.