About Us

What is the Section of Clinical Faculty?

The Section is a vital part of the BC Medical Association and represents the interests of up to 2,000 clinicians who provide part-time teaching of medical students and Residents in conjunction with patient care. The Section was created in 2007 and given official recognition by the BCMA Board. It carries on the work of an affiliated professional society, the University Clinical Faculty Association, created in 1999.

The Section is British Columbia’s only organization representing and supporting Clinical Teachers to provide the best care to their patients and the best training to students and Residents.

Why Do Clinical Faculty Need Representation?

Roughly two-thirds of the instruction needed to turn a medical student into a doctor is in the hands of Clinical Faculty. Clinical teaching takes place when practicing physicians mentor medical students and Residents to apply science to the care of the sick and injured. British Columbia is alone among Canadian provinces in the extent to which its university Faculty of Medicine depends so heavily on Clinical Faculty to provide this teaching. 

The Section and BCMA itself support expansion of the UBC Faculty of Medicine to increase the output of doctors by “making the whole province into a classroom”. If this expansion is to be successful, resources and processes will need to be put into place that encourage and support Clinical Faculty in all parts of the province. The reasons why were outlined by a UCFA President, Dr. David Haughton, in 2005:

“Teaching well takes time.  It takes a finite amount of time to teach the technique of history taking and the subtle points of the physical exam.  It takes a finite amount of time to teach a student how to sort through a differential diagnosis and to set clinical priorities.  A significant amount of time is needed to train basic surgical technique, performance of procedures, and complex operations. Dealing with multiple patients at once is the final, time-consuming aspect of clinical training.

Excellent patient care takes time.  It takes a finite amount of time to move a patient, empathetically and safely, through any medical process.  For a clinic visit or visit to a family doctor’s office a patient takes time from the waiting room through the examination room to discharge instructions home.  For a surgical procedure a patient requires time for pre-op diagnosis, evaluation, and instructions, time in the operating room theatre and recovery room, and time in rehabilitation and discharge planning.  A profoundly ill patient takes time being resuscitated in the emergency department, time in the intensive care unit, time on the hospital floor, and additional time in preparation for being discharged home. 

The times needed for teaching and the times needed for patient care are additive.  A family physician teaching a student can see fewer patients than he can alone.  A surgeon with a trainee physician can perform fewer operations than she can alone.  An emergency physician can triage, treat, and discharge fewer patients than he can alone.  This simple fact is a painful reality that the University needs to accept in order to solve this crisis. UBC has found money for construction, for research, and for administration.  It is time for the University to find money for the teaching and training of doctors. All Clinical Faculty need some form of protected time.

• All Clinical Faculty need some form of protected time to teach well.
• All Clinical Faculty need some form of protected time to safely care for their patients.
• All Clinical Faculty need some form of protected time for their own beleaguered sakes.”

KEY PRINCIPLES FOR THE FUTURE OF CLINICAL TEACHING IN BC

The Section supports the Principles published in 2005 by the UCFA in its report Teaching BC’s Doctors of Tomorrow: Our Commitment And Our Concern:

1)  Provided it is properly managed, clinical teaching benefits medical students and Residents, since it is a vital part of their development as professionals; the University, since it enables the Faculty of Medicine to tap the vital skills and experience of a large group of physicians; and the individual physician, since it can be a stimulating and satisfying way in which to put something back into society. Teaching new doctors is crucial for the province and for the medical profession.

2) Doctors have a responsibility to teach as clinical faculty who provide medical students and Residents access to their patients in order to transfer their skills and knowledge to the next generation of Doctors. In parallel with the responsibility of doctors to consider providing this service, government and the University have a responsibility to fund it appropriately.

3) If clinical training is to be sustainable, society must recognize that it comes at a cost both to doctors and patients. It costs patients because clinical teaching increases the time required for assessment and treatment, making waiting lists longer for consultations, diagnostic tests and surgery or treatment. It costs doctors by impacting, sometimes severely, their ability to manage their time efficiently. Efficient time management is vital to the average doctor’s ability to manage his or her practice.

4) In light of this, doctors must be fairly compensated for teaching medical students and residents at rates negotiated from time to time by the UCFA.

 5) UCFA is deeply concerned by Government and the University’s failure to set aside proper funding for clinical education. In recent years Ontario and Alberta have put $26 million and $10 million respectively into their Physicians’ budgets for expansion of clinical teaching. We wish to point out that as long as the BC Government and UBC fail to follow suit, the achievement of expanded medical training in this province is at risk and the talents and skills of the province’s doctors cannot be fully mobilized for additional clinical faculty.