Faculty Essential Information

Undergraduate medical education programs in Canada leading to the MD degree are accredited through a partnership between the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) and the U.S.-based Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). Every eight years, MD programs must conduct a full survey of resources, learning environment, curriculum, faculty, and student services in order to maintain accreditation.

This process includes an independently-conducted student analysis and a site visit by a team of external reviewers. The University of Ottawa MD program’s next full accreditation site visit is taking place April 15 to 18, 2018. To learn more about accreditation, visit the official Frequently Asked Questions page online.

An MD program is highly unlikely to lose its accreditation following a survey, however it may have its term of accreditation shortened, be placed on warning, or be placed on probation if it fails to meet several and/or serious components of the accreditation standards/elements. In the past, there have been instances where a Canadian medical school was placed on probation. A school on probation must send written notification of that status to all its students and applicants to its program. A probationary status may harm the reputation of that MD program, and could affect endowment contributions and national rankings. A school on probation will face a post-probation site visit about 18 months after the decision on probation is made. If the conditions that led to the probationary status are not corrected within a reasonable period of time, the school could have its accreditation withdrawn.

Policies and procedures are fundamental guidelines to help you make decisions. The MD Program has grouped all applicable University, Faculty and MD Program policies and procedures together. They can be accessed directly through the MD Program landing page or through ProfZone (Resources).

You may require a username and password to open some documents. Faculty members can use their curriculum account information (CBL, One45, Apollo) to gain access to these documents. Your password can be reset or synchronized through the uOttawa Medtech Manage passwords page.

The MD Program has grouped together Faculty appointment policies procedures under Faculty Policies. They can be accessed directly through the MD Program landing page or through ProfZone (Resources).

Here is a brief summary of these policies and procedures:

• Procedures Manual for Academic Appointments: Provides an introduction to academic appointments and outlines the general principles, requirements, and procedures for appointing clinical faculty members.
• Policy and Procedures for Academic Review: Outlines the academic review process including eligibility for reappointment.
• Academic Review Form and Guidelines: Form to be used to conduct the review.
• Guidelines for Academic Promotion of Clinical Faculty: Criteria and process for academic promotion to the levels of Associate professor and Full Professor for clinical professors.
• APUO Collective Agreement: Members of the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO) follow the APUO Collective Agreement.

You may require a username and password to open some documents. Faculty members can use their curriculum account information (CBL, One45, Apollo) to gain access to these documents. Your password can be reset or synchronized through the uOttawa Medtech Manage passwords page.

As a Faculty member, conflicts of interest can arise in a number of different ways:

• When supervising or assessing a student during a clinical placement or OSCE;
• In your dealings with industry or outside agencies; and
• When engaging in outside activities that interfere with the fulfillment of your obligations to the University.

The MD Program, Faculty of Medicine and University of Ottawa have established the following policies to support you in identifying a conflict of interest and how to address it:

• MD Program Policy on Conflict of Interest: MD students cannot be supervised or assessed by a treating physician, student’s family member or others close to the student who could compromise the objectivity of the student’s assessment.
• Faculty of Medicine Industry Relations Policy: Any conflict of interest which undermines the integrity of the learning environment (including physician-patient relationships) is to be avoided. This policy assists teachers in appraising and regulating their relationship with industry and to guide learning.
• uOttawa Policy 70 – Conflict of Interest: Applies to staff and faculty members who are employed either on a full-time or on some agreed-upon fixed proportion of a full-time basis by the University of Ottawa. Conflicts of interest arise when faculty members engage in outside activities that interfere with the fulfilment of their obligations to the University.

One you have identified that a conflict of interest has arisen, you need to take immediate action and disclose the conflict. This can be done by completing a Confidential Disclosure of Conflict of Interest Form.

The Faculty has identified the following diversity categories that apply to Faculty members:

• Francophone/bilingual (fluent in French; capable of teaching in French)
• Gender
• Indigenous

The Faculty of Medicine follows uOttawa Policies 67 and 67a. The Office of the Ombudsperson provides resources such as “Handling Complaints of Discrimination at the University of Ottawa”.

The Faculty is strongly committed to equity in all domains of membership e.g. race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, mental or physical impairment, age or illness. In fostering diversity, the reporting of discrimination is encouraged. The Faculty has a long established Equity, Diversity and Gender (EDG) Committee, chaired by the Director of EDG who reports to the Vice-Dean, Professional Affairs.

The Faculty of Medicine is committed to providing a safe and positive learning environment for all learners, faculty and staff.

The same high standards of professionalism are expected of all its members. All members are required to uphold the standards of ethical and professional behaviour consistent with the values of the University of Ottawa and with the values of the medical profession in the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association.

These standards are published in Policies and Procedures.

The Faculty of Medicine has no tolerance for mistreatment of any form. You may report an instance of unprofessionalism or mistreatment either as a witness, or as a person who was directly involved in the situation by completing an Incident Report.

ProfZone is an excellent source of information for Faculty members participating in the Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) Program. Among numerous other resources and tools, you can find:

• Diagram of the Curriculum
• Curriculum and Objectives: Competencies, Program & Learning Objectives
• Curriculum Interrogation Tool

The Curriculum Interrogation Tool allows you to:

• Display objectives mapped to a course (language stream of your choice)
• Review and search by keyword

NB: This tool does not work using Internet Explorer.

• Required Clinical Experiences (Year 3)

The UGME Program uses T-Clerk to track the expectations by rotation. It is important for clinical faculty members responsible for supervising, teaching or assessing medical students to be aware of the required clinical experiences.

• Link to Policies and Procedures (under Resources).

MD Program Competencies: The MD Program has based its competencies the CanMEDS Framework :

• Medical Expert/Clinician
• Communicator
• Collaborator
• Professional
• Health Advocate
• Scholar
• Manager
• Person (The MD Program added Person, to promote wellness and career counselling)

MD Program Objectives: The MD Program Objectives are objectives that ensure the medical student acquires the competency. For example, the program objective of: “demonstrate the ability to obtain a complete history and perform a physical examination on patients in all age groups” is required to meet the clinical competency.

Learning Objectives: Learning objectives are more in-depth and provide students with specific objectives associated to learning event. For example, learning objective #1127 (from Unit 1 cardiovascular section): Describe the advantages and limitations of each type of stress testing and explain the rationale for the performance of non-invasive testing.

1. Write a new objective, edit or remove a preexisting objective(edit objective using track changes in Word)
2. Submit proposed changes to the Content Expert who oversees the content area for the objective.
3. Content Expert will review with their counterpart in the other language stream.
4. Content Experts submit proposed changes to those to whom they report to in the curriculum (e.g. Unit Leader).
5. Proposed changes sent to Curriculum Content Review Committee (CCRC).
6. CCRC will review objective changes for potential gaps/redundancies in entire curriculum

All required rotation specific clinical encounters and procedural skills are listed on T-clerk. Clinical teachers can access T-clerk through ProfZone (on the Faculty’s Website). In addition:

• Rotation Director Face to Face Meetings:  A Rotation Director may meet directly with teaching faculty to review program and rotation objectives, T-clerk, teaching responsibilities, assessment and expectations.
• Specific Rotation Print / Electronic Format Resources:  Teaching Faculty receive information in print or electronic format specific to their rotation.  These resources include the T-clerk rotation specific list.

All MD program students are required to complete the Tri-Council Policy Statement Course on Research Ethics (TCPS 2: CORE) which includes modules on:

• Ethics (including the consent process; fairness and equity in research participation; privacy and confidentiality); governance of research ethics review; conflict of interest; multi-jurisdictional research; research involving the First Nations; Inuits and Métis peoples of Canada; qualitative research; clinical trials; human biological materials including materials related to human reproduction; and human genetic research.

All MD program students have the opportunity to participate in and learn about research (basic science, translational and clinical) through:

1. Research electives: these are available both in the pre-clerkship and clerkship years.
2. Clinical electives with clinician investigators.
3. Research mentorship program (students paired with a research mentor or clinician investigator longitudinally from Year 1 to Year 4; enabling them to follow all phases of a project from conceptualization and hypothesis development to dissemination of results)
4. Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) Speaker Series
5. Department of Innovation in Medical Education (DIME) monthly rounds
6. Editorial and authorship opportunities for the peer reviewed UOJM (University of Ottawa Journal of Medicine). 
7. Participation in the research, authorship, and editorial methodology for scientific publication UOJM lecture series through the UOJM program.

The MD program has added a new metric on assessing cultural safety to all clinical evaluations under the professionalism section (using the wording “communicates well with members of other cultures/backgrounds”).

Cultural competency and health care disparities are also assessed in the SIM component of the curriculum. 

This is done through the dissemination of agendas and minutes of the Faculty’s major decision making committees, through the ability of faculty members to attend the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee meetings, through Faculty of Medicine Annual General meetings and through two newsletters (Faculty wide and MD program specific).

Faculty Council – Agenda & Minutes

Faculty Council makes recommendations and seeks the approval of the University Senate or Board of Governors concerning:

• Development of or modifications to programs of study
• Policies and procedures
• Requirements for medical student promotions
• Other recommendations it considers appropriate to further the progress of the Faculty

Review the agenda (available a week in advance of the meeting) and approach your Departmental Chair or any member to ensure they are aware of and can represent your opinions appropriately.

You may obtain a copy of the Agenda and/or Minutes of meetings from Martine Desaulniers.

Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UCC) – Agenda & Minutes

The mandate of UCC can be found at: UCC Terms of Reference

Agendas for the year are posted on: UCC Terms of Reference webpage

Faculty members can approach any member of the Committee to ensure they are aware of and can represent your opinions appropriately

Faculty members are welcome to propose changes to the curriculum through the committees that report to UCC or directly to UCC itself.

The UCC holds scheduled open meetings.

The minutes are available to Faculty members by sending an e-mail to ugmedean@uottawa.ca

Faculty of Medicine Forum: Annual General Meetings

Executive Leadership Team presents updates on topics of importance in informal, interactive setting

Dates of upcoming meetings are posted on MedPoint Newsletter.

The MedPoint Newsletter (available online): Source of Faculty wide information and provides opportunity for Faculty members to suggest content.

MD Connexion: MD program newsletter which is distributed to all faculty who teach in the MD program (classroom teaching and bedside/clinical teaching) .

All residents are made aware of MD student learning objectives prior to engaging in teaching activities through the following:

• mandatory one-day orientation session (at the start of residency) which includes a session that covers MD program educational & learning objectives
• residents and fellows are required to complete a mandatory e-learning module entitled: “Teaching Medical Students: A Toolkit for Residents”
• residents and fellows have an action assigned to them via their One45 account to confirm that they have reviewed the rotation specific and overall objectives as well as required clinical encounters
• before each block, PGME sends a message to residents to remind them to review the MD program objectives and required clinical encounters.

In the event of an accident in a clinical setting, please ensure the student is aware they are required to do the following:

1) alert your clinical instructor of your accident and seek first aid;

2) go to the emergency department for assessment and treatment;

3) complete the uOttawa incident form;

4) advise MD program liaison officer and the Clinical Placement Risk Management Office (613-562-5800 ext. 3391)

Please be aware that every student has the obligation and the responsibility to complete the uOttawa incident form within 24 hours after an accident if:

• he/she suffers an injury (scalpel cut, needle prick, etc.) in the clinical setting or when the incident could have resulted in being injured because of a violation of the occupational health and safety standards;
• when the injury results in an absence from the clinical setting.