Supporting medical students in family medicine training

We read with interest the article by Oandasan et al entitled “Giving curriculum planners an edge. Using entrance surveys to design family medicine education.”¹ It described the state of undergraduate medical education in Canada and the results of a pilot survey of incoming residents that asked, among other things, about their family medicine experiences in medical school training. In their discussion, the authors “argue that exposure to what family physicians do (competencies) within the contexts that reflect the comprehensive scope of family medicine practice (domains of clinical care) should be considered in the curriculum planning of those introducing family medicine into medical school curricula.”¹

We are pleased to reassure readers that a curriculum supporting a comprehensive scope of family medicine practice has been developed that serves to educate all undergraduate medical students in Canadian medical schools and already partly delivers on the curriculum argued for in the paper by Oandasan et al.

The Shared Canadian Curriculum in Family Medicine started in 2006 as a project of the Canadian Undergraduate Family Medicine Directors. Supported by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Shared Canadian Curriculum in Family Medicine is a national consensus curriculum that supports undergraduate family medicine leaders in delivering medical student training in family medicine. This curriculum, which includes core topics, competency-based objectives, and learning resources, is available for free to anyone who accesses the website (sharcfm.com). In addition, this curriculum development process has provided a novel route to scholarship recognition for educators who developed material for this national curriculum.

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