McGill Faculty Of Medicine

The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences is one of the constituent faculties of McGill University. It was established in 1829 after the Montreal Medical Institution was incorporated into McGill College as the college's first faculty; it was the first medical faculty to be established in Canada. The Faculty awarded McGill's first degree, and Canada's first medical degree to William Leslie Logie in 1833.

McGill's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences is one of the most well-regarded medical schools in the world. Many researchers, physicians, clinicians, and pioneers within their respective fields have graduated from or have been affiliated with the faculty. Its graduates have gone on to found the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Hospital. There have been at least two Nobel Prize laureates who have completed their entire education at McGill University including MD at the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences including Andrew Schally (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977) and David H. Hubel (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1981).

History

The Montreal Medical Institution, was established in 1823 by four physicians, Andrew Fernando Holmes, John Stephenson, William Caldwell and William Robertson, all of whom had been trained at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and were involved in the foundation of the Montreal General Hospital. In 1829 it was incorporated into McGill College as the new College's first faculty; it thus became the first Faculty of Medicine in Canada. A highly didactic approach to medical education called the "Edinburgh curriculum", which consisted of two six-month courses of basic science lectures and two years of "walking the wards" at The Montreal General Hospital, was instituted. From 1833 to 1877 the Faculty followed the pattern set by the University of Edinburgh and required graduating students to submit an 'inaugural dissertation' - a database of these is available.

Sir William Dawson, the principal of McGill, was instrumental in garnering resources for the faculty and pioneering contributions from Thomas Roddick, Francis Shepherd, George Ross and Sir William Osler helped to transform the Victorian era medical school into a leader in modern medical education. Osler graduated from the MDCM program at McGill University Faculty of Medicine in 1872, and co-founded the present-day Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1893.

In 1905, the Bishop's University Medical Faculty Montreal who established in Montreal in 1871 closed and amalgamated with McGill University to create the new McGill University Faculty of Medicine, where BU graduates such as Maude Abbott, one of the Canada's earliest female medical graduates transferred to work for McGill as the Curator of the McGill Medical Museum.

The McGill University Health Centre was part of a $2.355 billion Redevelopment Project on three sites - the Glen, the Montreal General and Lachine hospitals. A new $1.300 billion MUHC Glen site fully integrated super-hospital complex opened in 2015.

A new satellite campus for McGill Medicine for a French stream MD, CM program was established in 2020 for the Outaouais region with a graduating class size of 24 and total of 96 in the program. The establishment of the program is part of a $32.5-million construction project of the Groupe de médecine familiale universitaire (GMF-U) de Gatineau.

In September 2020, the Faculty of Medicine changed its name to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences to reflect the growth of interprofessionalism and the diversity in the Faculty of Medicine.

Education

The faculty offers a four-year MDCM degree in medicine and surgery. The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences also offers joint degree programs with other disciplines including business (M.D.- M.B.A.) and science/engineering (M.D.- Ph.D.). There is also an accelerated program for selected graduates of the Quebec college system (PRE-MED-ADM or MED-P) that combines one year of science curriculum with the four-year M.D., C.M. degrees.

It is closely affiliated with the McGill University Faculty of Dentistry. Students of dentistry receive instruction together with their medical student colleagues for the first 18 months of their professional training.

The faculty includes six schools: the School of Medicine, the Ingram School of Nursing, the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, the School of Population & Global Health and the School of Biomedical Sciences. It also includes several research centres involved in studies on, for example, pain, neuroscience, and aging. Most of the non-clinical parts of the faculty are housed in the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building ("The Beer Can", “McMed”), situated on McGill's downtown campus on the south side of Mount Royal between Avenue des Pins and Avenue Docteur-Penfield.

The McGill University Faculty of Medicine was the first medical school in Canada to institute a joint MD-MBA program in 1997 in collaboration with the Desautels Faculty of Management. This program allowed students to complete both degrees in five years.

Affiliations

McGill University Health Centre

*GLEN super hospital
** Royal Victoria Hospital
** Montreal Children's Hospital
**Montreal Chest Institute
* Montreal General Hospital
** Allan Memorial Institute (contains MGH's outpatient psychiatry)
* Montreal Neurological Hospital
* Hôpital de Lachine

McGill affiliate hospitals

* Lakeshore General Hospital
* Jewish General Hospital
* St. Mary's Hospital
*Douglas Mental Health University Institute
*Shriners Hospital for Children
*Hôpital de Gatineau - Groupe de médecine de famille universitaire (GMF-U) de Gatineau
*Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital (JRH)
*Mount Sinai Hospital Montreal

Reputation

McGill's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences has a national and international reputation with a list of faculty and alumni, many of whom were pioneers in their respective fields. It is also ranked as the number 1 medical school nationally in Canada by Maclean's for 18 straight years (including the most recent ranking for 2023). McGill's Medical School has also consistently ranked in the top medical schools worldwide and ranked 21st worldwide on a recent QS World University Ranking of top medical schools world-wide.
Particularly, among McGill University's renowned reputation of Rhodes Scholars, McGill's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences has also produced a number of Rhodes Scholars (Cecil James Falconer Parsons, Munroe Bourne, Douglas George Cameron, Alan G. Kendall, Robert Murray Mundle, John Doehu Stubbs, Geoffrey E. Dougherty, Brian James Ward, Lesley Fellows, Anne Andermann, Astrid-Christoffersen-Deb, Aleksandra Leligdowicz, Benjamin Mappin-Kasirer, Alexander Lachapelle), including one in the recent 2018 cohort.
For medical school students entering in Fall 2020, the mean four-year undergraduate GPA was 3.87 (excluding graduate GPA), and the mean MCAT score was 32.1 (85th-88th percentile).

Admissions to the McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences M.D., C.M. program are highly competitive with an acceptance rate of 5.7% for the Class of 2026.

The Department of Anatomy and Physiology at McGill University ranked 3rd globally in the 2017 QS World University Rankings after Oxford University and Cambridge.

Harry Houdini incident

In October 1926, renowned magician Harry Houdini was giving a lecture on exposed mediums and spiritualists at McGill University and had invited medical students to his dressing room at Montreal's Princess Theatre. J. Gordon Whitehead, a medical student and boxer, had asked Houdini if he could take a sudden punch to the stomach, as had rumoured to be the case; Houdini received several unexpected punches. Feeling ill later that evening and after refusing medical treatment, Houdini was diagnosed with acute appendicitis a couple of days later and died on October 31, 1926. It remains a controversy whether Houdini died as a result of the punches or was simply unaware of a current appendicitis prior, and Whitehead was never charged.

Notable faculty and alumni

* Bernard Nathanson M.D., C.M. 1949 — obstetrician/gynecologist
* Victor Dzau M.D., C.M. 1972 — president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, former president and CEO of Duke University Medical Center
* Daniel Borsuk O.Q., B.Sc. 2000, M.D., C.M. 2006, M.B.A. 2006 — performed first face transplant in Canada
* Thomas Chang O.C., M.D., C.M., Ph.D., FRCP(C), FRS(C) — pioneer in biomedical engineering, “Father of Artificial Cells”
* Robert Thirsk O.C., O.B.C., M.D., C.M., M.S., M.B.A. — Canadian engineer and physician, astronaut, and chancellor emeritus University of Calgary.
* Joannie Rochette M.D., C.M. 2020 — medal-winning Olympic figure skater
* E. Fuller Torrey M.D., C.M. 1963 — psychiatrist and schizophrenia researcher, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center
* Maurice Brodie M.D., C.M. 1928 — polio researcher
* Jack Wright M.D., C.M. 1928, — internationally top-ranked tennis star, winner of three Canadian Open men's singles titles and four doubles titles
* Mark Cohen M.D., C.M. 1992 — ophthalmologist, laser eye surgeon and co-founder of LASIK MD
* Avi Wallerstein — ophthalmologist, laser eye surgeon and co-founder of LASIK MD
* Charles Scriver M.D., C.M. 1955 — Canadian pediatrician and biochemical geneticist
* Dafydd Williams O.C., O.Ont., M.D., C.M. 1983, M.S., M.B.A. — a Canadian physician, public speaker, CEO, author and multi-mission astronaut.
*David R. Boyd M.D., C.M. 1963, — trauma surgeon, and developer of Regional Trauma Emergency Medical Services ( EMS).
* Charles R. Drew M.D., C.M. 1933 — father of modern blood-banking; namesake of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science; founding medical director of the Red Cross Blood Bank in the United States
* Richard Goldbloom O.C., O.N.S., M.D., C.M. 1949 — pediatrician, chancellor of Dalhousie University 1986-2004
* Paul Bruce Beeson M.D., C.M. 1933 — professor of medicine, specializing in infectious diseases; discoverer of interleukin-1
* Ian Stevenson M.D., C.M. 1943 — Canadian-born U.S. psychiatrist
* Ken Evoy M.D., C.M. 1979 — Emergency physician, entrepreneur, founder and chairman of the board of SiteSell
* William Wright M.D., C.M. 1848 — first person of colour to earn a medical degree in North America
* Laurent Duvernay-Tardif M.D., C.M. 2018 — offensive guard for the NFL's New York Jets
* Phil Gold, B.Sc. 1957, M.Sc. 1961, M.D., C.M. 1961, Ph.D. 1965 — physician, scientist, and professor, discoverer of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), the first biomarker for cancer
* Haile Debas M.D., C.M. 1963 — Dean of the UCSF School of Medicine from 1993 to 2003
* Phil Edwards, M.D., C.M. 1936 — "Man of Bronze", Canada's most-decorated Olympian for many years, and expert in tropical diseases
* David Goltzman, B.Sc. 1966, M.D., C.M. 1968 — physician, scientist, and professor
* Noni MacDonald, pediatric infectious diseases expert, former Dean of Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine 1999-2003 and first woman in Canada to be named Dean of a medical school.
* Vivek Goel, M.D., C.M. 1984 — president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo
* Katherine O'Brien, M.D., C.M. 1988 — infectious disease expert; Director of the World Health Organization's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals
* Frederick Lowy

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