The risk of not being able to recruit top medical students in Canada is over for the University of Alberta with the news its school of medicine no longer faces probation by a U.S. accreditation agency.
Dr. Tom Marrie, dean of the university's faculty of medicine, says the department is moving ahead with plans to boost its curriculum and do more to tackle mistreatment of students.
Both were areas of concern for the U.S. accreditation group.
Probation would have definitely hurt the university, Dr. Marrie said in an interview Friday.
"If it was still in place, in all likelihood, some of the top students may not apply to our program," he said. "They might have looked at our program as less desirable .ƒ{.ƒ{. and go elsewhere."
If a medical school isn't accredited, students can't qualify for residency programs, so can't get their medical licences.
The faculty is making several changes, including adopting more modern teaching methods to ensure a better education for students.
A committee also has been set up to work with Capital Health on how students are treated.
"The mistreatment for the most part is in areas where people are under stress and may speak abruptly to somebody, occasionally challenging them over something they should know," Dr. Marrie said.
A delegation that included Dr. Marrie, the university's chancellor and its president travelled to Washington, D.C. earlier this week to present the university's appeal.
The U.S.-based Liaison Committee on Medical Education had informed them last year that it wanted to put the school on probation.
The committee identified 12 areas of concern, mostly curriculum-related, but officials argued the university was complying with at least seven of the standards and that was good enough.
"I can only assume they agreed with us because they granted us ongoing accreditation," Dr. Marrie said.
The medical school will be surveyed by the accreditation committee again in a year.
Robert Eaglen, the accreditation committee's interim secretary, said there are still concerns that will need to be addressed.
"It doesn't necessarily mean that some of the issues are not still concerns for accreditation but they're not sufficiently worrisome that probation would be the appropriate mechanism for dealing with them," he said Friday from his office in Washington.
The committee says probation is an unusual step that has only happened to one other Canadian medical school - the University of Saskatchewan - in the past five years.
The committee accredits 17 programs in Canada and 125 programs in the United States.