A message from Gerry Cooper, Associate Dean

It may seem a little out of the box to draw parallels between the development of the automobile and our School's accreditation process. However, when you reflect on the growth of standards, safety measures, testing in the auto industry you can easily see how that is much like the growth of medical education and the standards that govern our medical schools.

In North America, there are two accreditation bodies that ensure that quality and consistency are present when it concerns the Medical Doctor (MD) degree: the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and the Committee on the Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS). Just as we take comfort in knowing vehicles on the roads today are safe (via licensing and safety checks) we also are assured that physicians who care for us have been properly trained at reputable schools.

All this to say that the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry will have its review in 2015 as we seek to renew our accreditation standing. This is a very important matter and one that is not taken lightly. Preparing for accreditation is an intensive and ongoing process; even more so in the year leading up to the accreditation site visit. In this way, 2014 will be a very busy year for Schulich Medicine as we ready ourselves for our formal accreditation.

This is especially the case with regard to the Windsor Program. When Schulich Medicine last hosted the accreditors (2008), the Windsor Program was a very new entity with only 24 students. Of course, we have witnessed exceptional growth since that time. In fact, we will continue to experience "firsts" until September 2014 when we will have officially completed our first year with 38 students in each of the four years of the MD program; our so-called "steady state".

As the Windsor Program prepares for its first full accreditation experience, this will be a shared experience by all connected to our Program: learners, faculty, staff, administration; even community collaborators may be asked to be involved.

For these reasons, 2014 will be a year that we are focused on making sure that the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. We will want to make sure that our policies are clear and known by all; that our medical education "engine" is firing on all cylinders.