Shortening the medical curriculum

As a proud graduate of McMaster University and being in favour of the three-year medical curriculum, I thought I would offer my thoughts on the benefits of a three year medical education program. Though Dr. Ayach (CMAJ, 2008 Mar 25;178(7):883) is correct, students at McMaster and Calgary do not have a summer holiday to complete research projects. Speaking from personal experience medical students at McMaster are encouraged from the onset of the program to pursue research endeavours, and can be paired with research supervisors with similar interests Despite the intense nature of the three year program, I believe there is ample opportunity for research; students must complete a research project at the end of the third year and many students have presented at meetings and published throughout their medical training. Dr Ayach rightly suggests that the summer provides students the opportunity to seek out research projects and time to complete them without interfering with their medical education. While some students take advantage of this time, there is no evidence to suggest how many do, and my personal experience suggests that many students use this time as a holiday. This break, though good for the psyche, and potentially bad on the pocketbook, has the downside of breaking one from the mindset and routine of medicine. As a resident and staff there are no long summer breaks, and the 3 year program models this.

A large benefit to a shorter curriculum lies in the decreased cost to the student’s education. With the average debt of $80,000 after 4 year’s of medical training [National Physician Survey, 2007; CMAJ 2002;166[8]:1023-8], and ever increasing cost each year of medical education, reducing the training time by one year can save the student a significant cost, without necessarily hampering their ability to conduct research.

As the three year program has a similar number of weeks of training, I do not believe we should dismiss it based on suspected research downfalls, as there are other inherent benefits of a shorter program.

Conflict of Interest:

None declared