Deliberative curriculum inquiry for integration in an MD curriculum: Dalhousie University's curriculum renewal process

Background: Dalhousie University's MD Programme faced a one-year timeline for renewal of its undergraduate curriculum. Aim: Key goals were renewed faculty engagement for ongoing quality improvement and increased collaboration across disciplines for an integrated curriculum, with the goal of preparing physicians for practice in the twenty-first century. Methods: We engaged approximately 600 faculty members, students, staff and stakeholders external to the faculty of medicine in a process described by Harris (1993) as 'deliberative curriculum inquiry'. Temporally overlapping and networked intraprofessional and interprofessional teams developed programme outcomes, completed environment scans of emerging content and best practices, and designed curricular units. Results: The resulting curriculum is the product of new collaborations among faculty and exemplifies distinct forms of integration. Innovations include content and cases shared by concurrent units, foundations courses at the beginning of each year and integrative experiences at the end, and an interprofessional community health mentors programme. Conclusion: The use of deliberative inquiry for pre-med curriculum renewal on a one-year time frame is feasible, in part through the use of technology. Ongoing structures for integration remain challenging. Although faculty collaboration fosters integration, a learner-centred lens must guide its design.