Revising the formal, retrieving the hidden: undergraduate curricular reform in medicine and the scientific, institutional, and social transformation of the clinical training environment

In 2004, members of the McGill University Faculty of Medicine began implementing a new curriculum for undergraduate medical education entitled, Physicianship: The Physician as Professional and Healer. The initiative underscores the idea that physician training entails cultivating not only scientific knowledge and technical skill, but a mindset guided by intrinsic principles of doctoring. Although the McGill case exemplifies a wide-spread paradigm shift in medical teaching, there is a dearth of analysis concerning the degree of congruency between the objectives of formal undergraduate curricular revision and the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ of the hospital training environment. With Physicianship as a point of departure, this dissertation maps evolutionary patterns in clinical medicine and, using qualitative methods, analyzes the perspectives of twenty physician-educators on curricular reform and the transforming clinical training environment. Physicians interviewed were generally supportive of the new curricular initiative. Concerns were raised, however, that many recent changes within the teaching hospital environment interfere with students’ cultivation of professional and healer attributes. These changes were organized into three main themes: scientific, institutional, and social. Physicians expressed concern that what is often considered beneficial for patients is often detrimental for medical training. For example, increased use of diagnostic technologies has improved patient care but reduces opportunities for trainees’ clinical skill development. Concern was raised that the concept of selfless service has been undermined through recent shift-work regulations and a culture gap between older and younger generation physicians. Alternatively, some perceived new policies of the clinical environment to be more conducive to physicians’ self-care and quality of life. Younger trainees were often described as more competent in managing medical information, more open to diversity, more candid about their needs, and more apt to challenge dogmatic or ethically substandard practices. The complexity of the transforming clinical environment is used to justify a rationale for developing the concept of Phronesis (practical wisdom) as a pedagogical framework. The concepts of ‘acuity of perception’ and ‘mastery of emotion’ are grounded in the data and analyzed for the development of Phronesis, to advance the field of medical education and support curricular initiatives such as the Physicianship program.