History of the School of Medicine

Since its founding in 1966, innovation has been the hallmark of McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine in Hamilton, Ont., and a major contributor to its international reputation for excellence.

Under the leadership of Dr. John Evans, the school’s first dean, a group of innovative educators developed an undergraduate medical program that stirred controversy and defied convention by emphasizing self-directed learning. McMaster created a revolution in health care training with the establishment of a medical school that pioneered a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum, which has since influenced health care education worldwide.

The inaugural convocation in 1972 saw 19 students receive their MD degrees. That same year construction was completed of the McMaster University Health Sciences Centre, a uniquely designed building housing a 370-bed tertiary care hospital together with teaching and research facilities for the medical school. Two years later, the Faculty of Health Sciences was formed, incorporating the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing. By the early 1990s, building on its interprofessional character, the Faculty had expanded to include a School of Rehabilitation Science, a midwifery program, various post-professional diploma programs and graduate studies. In 2000 a popular Bachelor of Health Sciences program began and, in 2008, Canada’s first undergraduate physician assistant program.

In 2004, the medical school moved into the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery, a new $71-million, 300,000-square-foot facility, linked by pedestrian skyway to the Health Sciences Centre. The building includes small group classrooms equipped with the newest technology suited to the needs of our diverse educational programs as well as state-of-the-art wet laboratories, including a human vector laboratory unique to Canadian universities.

From its early days as the focus of controversy and scrutiny, McMaster’s medical school has prospered, and proven that its community-oriented, interdisciplinary, small group learning provides a fertile environment for educating physicians. In 2005, the school launched a completely revamped undergraduate medical curriculum that is concept-based and electronically enhanced.

The school was named the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine in 2003, in honour of the Hamilton philanthropist who made the largest-ever donation to a Canadian institution of $105 million.

Traditionally, the school receives double the number of applications than other Canadian medical schools, with more than 4,500 applicants vying for the three-year program’s 204 entry positions.

McMaster currently has 541 undergraduate medical students and more than 700 medical residents working in 44 specialties and sub-specialties.

The medical school has also expanded with distributed education to two regional campuses, in Waterloo and Niagara. The Waterloo Regional Campus moved into its purpose-built space on the Downtown Kitchener Health Sciences Campus of the University of Waterloo in the fall of 2009. The Niagara Regional Campus will move into its new building on the campus of Brock University in 2011.

Medical students and residents can gain clinical experience at academic and community hospitals from Brampton through Brantford and Niagara Falls, as well as through placements in more than 60 small and rural Ontario communities, in keeping with a move towards distributed education.

The Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine has gained international recognition for groundbreaking medical and health science research. For five years in a row, McMaster has ranked second in Canada for biomedical and health care research revenues. In 2008-2009, Faculty investigators were overseeing $133 million a year in research, much of that research conducted by scientists and physicians who teach in the medical school.