Mcmaster university medical school

The Undergraduate Medical Program for the MD degree was initiated in 1969, graduating its first students in May 1972. At present, 203 students are admitted to the program each year.The three-year program in Medicine uses a problem-based approach to learning that should apply throughout the physician's career. The components have been organized in sequential blocks with early exposure to patients and case management. The academic program operates on an 11 months-a-year basis and students qualify for the MD degree at the end of the third academic year.

The COMPASS curriculum aims to ensure that our graduates have a good working understanding of biological, psychological and social mechansims and processes, as well as their impact on health and disease, based on principles of learning drawn from cognitive psychology. Recent evidence from cognitive psychology about how people learn and use concepts suggests specific strategies which are very compatible with the basic approach to problem-based learning. These advances have guided McMaster curriculum planners to develop a curriculum that can ensure that concepts, once mastered, will be available to students when resolving clinical dilemmas. The COMPASS curriculum is structured to allow the integration of critically important fundamental concepts in medicine and affords an opportunity for students to have the time to practice applying these concepts to multiple different clinical problems.In the COMPASS curriculum, the tutorial group remains the key setting in which students will contribute to each other's education under the guidance of a tutor. Students take a lot of responsibility for their own learning and acquire different information at different times and thus, time is allowed for independent, self-directed learning. However, there are cogent reasons for delivering lectures that help students synthesize and contextualize the information they have been learning. There is a continuing evaluation process including assessment by tutors, peers and self, as well as program-related evaluation exercises.