Top-notch accreditation results for USask College of Medicine

“I believe our medical school is now among the strongest of any medical doctor program in the country in terms of this accreditation outcome,” said Dr. Preston Smith, dean of the college. “This latest result speaks again to the commitment and effort of our faculty, staff and students—with critical support from our university, health system and government partners—who rallied and worked together through significant change to create a strong program. The accreditors have acknowledged our team’s success.”

While the college achieved full accreditation in the wake of a complete onsite review in 2017, CACMS required some written reports as follow up once additional data could be collected that wasn’t available at the time of the visit. The college submitted those reports in 2019 and received successful results from CACMS this week.

The College of Medicine has now earned the satisfaction of the accrediting body across all 93 areas CACMS reviewed and will not be required to host another site visit until 2025 or 2026. Two areas require time for more data to be collected and further reporting provided to CACMS, but were not flagged as being of concern.

“It’s a very significant turnaround for our college,” Smith said. “We are delivering a program we are proud of and more importantly, that supports the needs of our patients and province with great future physicians. That said, our school is committed to continuous quality improvement and ongoing effort to achieve that. If we do that well, accreditation is taken care of, too.”

Over the past few decades, the school has worked through accreditation challenges that required a significant overhaul of the program to permanently address ongoing issues. The college followed a plan, The Way Forward, which was developed specifically for this purpose and released in 2013.