Even the best and the brightest are struggling with McGill Universitys rigorous new first-year medical school curriculum this year so much so that an alarming failure rate has prompted the class president to write to faculty to ask that changes be made to address some major curricular concerns. <\/p>\n
Nebras Warsi, president of the McGill Medicine Class of 2017, outlined curriculum and evaluation problems in his letter, which was obtained by The Gazette and which he said was intended for internal purposes to rectify minor problems with a program that is much more demanding than the old curriculum. <\/p>\n
Although David Eidelman, the dean of medicine, said he couldnt confirm the failure rate circulating among students, they say that in the class of about 200 students, 45 failed histology (the study of tissues) and about 35 failed anatomy. <\/p>\n
Eidelman said those who failed had remediation and all but one or two eventually passed. There is no bell-curving of exams, and students who fail are required to pass remedial exams of comparable difficulty. <\/p>\n
Warsis letter said there was an unusually high failure rate on multiple exams within the reflection and evaluation week and that there has been real confusion about the objectives of the curriculum. He subsequently said its hard to compare the failures with previous years because of the increased amount of material on this years tests. <\/p>\n
For example, he said, under the new curriculum students are tested on almost double the amount of material on an anatomy exam compared with previous years. <\/p>\n
We have realized that the tight scheduling of exams in the new curriculum (we often have five exams within one week), coupled with the greater amount of knowledge we are now learning, is what likely led to this outcome, he said. As well, the academic requirement to constitute a pass has been raised from passing the overall unit to passing each individual component separately. <\/p>\n
The amount of cumulative information required, plus the new grading scheme, has some students panicking. <\/p>\n
While Warsi tried to downplay concerns on Friday, other students said they are alarmed about their eventual fundamentals of medicine program, which will have an exam covering 18 months of material with almost no time off to study for it. And the coming set of June cumulative reflection and evaluation exams gives them only a weekend to prepare for testing on a years worth of material. <\/p>\n
Its insane! said one student, who didnt want to be identified, but insists its much harder for students to succeed under the new curriculum and many are discouraged. <\/p>\n
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McGill students voice concerns over new medical school curriculum<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even the best and the brightest are struggling with McGill Universitys rigorous new first-year medical school curriculum this year so much so that an alarming failure rate has prompted the class president to write to faculty to ask that changes be made to address some major curricular concerns. Nebras Warsi, president of the McGill Medicine Class of 2017, outlined curriculum and evaluation problems in his letter, which was obtained by The Gazette and which he said was intended for internal purposes to rectify minor problems with a program that is much more demanding than the old curriculum Continue reading