UBC

Brian Day suggests that Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) used at UBC, Mc­Master University, and elsewhere are tantamount to kindergarten play [So you want to be a doctor? BCMJ 2011;53:389]. 

Moreover, his problematic argument indemnifies the use of MMI for the medical education system’s failure to educate all qualified candidates and the resulting short supply of physicians in Canada. These are two important but different points.

I would like to thank Mr Greatheart for his interest in my editorial. Like Dr Finkler and colleagues, he claims that MMI correlates with producing better doctors, but provides no evidence that it does so. 

Additionally, I never suggested that having an arts background should limit one’s ability to enter medical school. When one can’t find points in an argument that one can critique it is inappropriate to apply criticism to other points that were not made. 

Whenever I talk to doctors and professors about the method of teaching they received as students in medical school, they invariably answer that in the “old days,” their medical school curriculum was didactic and entirely lecture based, with no problem-based learning (PBL). How things have changed. 

Today the University of British Columbia Medical School includes PBL as a major part of the curriculum. In fact, by sequestering 6 hours per week in the schedule of a first- or second-year medical student, PBL usually takes up about as much time as lectures do. 

The BCMJ is pleased to introduce our newest Editorial Board member, Dr Yvonne Sin.