MONTREAL A new curriculum being introduced this year in the faculty of medicine at McGill University has some doctors worried that McGill will lose its edge in the world of research and become a family doctor factory that will diminish the universitys status.

Some physicians who have been involved with teaching at McGill oppose the direction of the new curriculum, arguing that it cuts back on the foundational science required for medical students and will jeopardize McGills long-standing ability to produce high-calibre clinician scientists doctors who also do research.

But champions of the new program say the new curriculum is necessary in order to produce more family physicians that the provincial government is actually insisting on it and that not only will it give students more exposure to family medicine, it will teach them how to learn independently, which is required in the fast-evolving world of medical science.

Letters have gone out recently to a corps of teaching doctors who have been told their services will no longer be required starting in the 2013-14 academic session as McGill plans to drastically reduce the number of lectures given to medical students.

The current lecture-intensive first year will instead feature lectures only in the mornings, and small-group sessions with patients or problem-solving in the afternoons.

This has left many doctors wondering how these students will acquire the foundation of science needed to become doctors and they say its particularly worrisome considering that half of McGills first-year doctoral students consists of pre-med students coming right out of CEGEP.

While McGill is really just following a North American trend, and no one is arguing against the push to create more interest in family medicine, the threat of weakening the universitys impressive team of physicians who do research, and the overall quality of medical students, was a major concern at a recent town hall meeting introducing the new curriculum.

People are united in their opposition to this, Dr. Phil Gold of the McGill University Health Centre, one of Canadas pre-eminent cancer researchers, told the medical school hierarchy at the meeting.

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