Ob-gyn faculty member wins grant to study Canada’s medical accreditation standards

David Rojas, an assistant professor in the ob-gyn department, has been awarded the Medical Education Strategic Research Grant from Temerty Faculty of Medicine for his research on medical education accreditation in Canada, comprising undergraduate medical education, postgraduate residency training and continuing professional development.

Each of these cohorts is accredited by different national bodies that operate under their own standards and review cycles. Rojas’s two-year study will explore whether a shared core framework could better align systems while preserving regulatory integrity.

Rojas, director of program evaluation for medical education at Temerty Medicine and a scientist at The Wilson Centre, answered questions from writer Matthew Tierney about his project, “Aligning Accreditation Across the Medical Education Continuum: Advancing Sustainable Quality Improvement in Canada.”

When did you realize there was potential for accreditation alignment?

In both my work as director and in my research, I began to notice something interesting. The data we collect across the educational continuum to demonstrate program quality is very similar across the different stages of medical training, but the way that accreditation bodies ask institutions to report that data, and show compliance, can vary significantly. These accreditation processes demand substantial institutional time, coordination and resources.

I asked myself: Is there a way to make the system more efficient without compromising quality?

My background is in engineering. That training encourages thinking about systems as interconnected processes that can be optimized to function better. Thus, I started designing and looking for ways to integrate evaluation frameworks to better support accreditation processes while still respecting the unique requirements of each stage of the educational continuum.

This led me to wonder too whether a more integrated compliance framework could strengthen how we monitor and improve medical educational quality overall.

What opportunities do you see to create efficiencies?

The main one arises from how medical education is experienced in practice.

From an pedagogical perspective, the system is continuous. What I mean by that is faculty members often teach both undergraduate and postgraduate learners in the same clinical environments. And trainees move from medical school into residency programs within the same institutions, frequently working with the same faculty and within the same health systems.

The educational ecosystem is highly interconnected. The underlying data used to demonstrate program quality — such as learner feedback, clinical learning environment measures, and program evaluation data — are often very similar, even if they feed into accreditation processes with distinct frameworks.

How might we leverage these shared data sources more effectively? Could there be a shared requirements and standards framework across accreditation bodies that still respects the differences across contexts? Perhaps institutions could then generate evidence for multiple accreditation processes more efficiently while maintaining the rigor required by each accrediting body.

Last, alignment across medical accreditation bodies can further support the development of integrated data systems, which in turn can help institutions identify trends more easily, share insights across programs, and strengthen educational quality across the entire training continuum. This can be the foundation to develop a CQI culture that supports accreditation.

Where do you see medical accreditation in Canada in the next decade?

Medicine is a self-regulated profession, and accreditation plays an essential role in ensuring accountability and maintaining public trust. Medical accreditation is not going to disappear. However, the next decade offers an important opportunity to critically examine how accreditation operates and ensure that evidence informed practices guide processes that must be both efficient and transparent, particularly given the high stakes associated with medical school quality assurance.

What I expect to change is how we approach the measurement of quality and compliance. Technological advances are creating new opportunities to collect, analyze and interpret educational data, and there is growing interest in what we have called “accreditation science,” the systematic study of accreditation processes and their impact.

I believe accreditation processes in Canada will continue to evolve to ensure that medicine meets its social contract with society. This will likely involve greater integration of evaluation frameworks and better use of institutional data systems, allowing accreditation bodies to gain a deeper understanding of the quality of the medical educational through meaningful evidence of educational quality and improvement.

What does winning this grant mean to you?

This is really a recognition of the team behind the project rather than the work of any single individual. I’m fortunate to work within a community of colleagues who encourage asking critical questions about processes that are often taken for granted, including accreditation.

Personally, this funding is meaningful because it signals to me that the idea of exploring efficiencies across accreditation systems resonates with others in the field. What may initially sound idealistic has gained traction from colleagues who believe there is an opportunity there for improvement.