Five things you didn't know about the Faculty of Medicine

If you’re not studying or working in one of Dalhousie University’s health profession programs, you may not regularly venture onto Carleton Campus (unless you’ve gravitated towards Dal’s only Starbucks location). But the stretch of University Avenue between Robie and Summer streets is a busy interchange of medical students, graduate students, residents, physicians and health researchers.

Dating back to 1868, the Faculty of Medicine — colloquially known as Dalhousie Medical School — is home to 22 clinical and basic science departments. And with campuses in Halifax and Saint John, and 100+ teaching sites scattered across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I., Dal’s medical research and clinical learning environments extend across the Maritimes.

Besides training top-notch docs and researchers, there are a few other things you should know about Dalhousie Medical School.

1. Its faculty are Maritime Canada’s doctors

The medical school’s faculty members are the same doctors and physicians you see in hospitals and clinics across Maritime Canada. And most of them have been trained at Dalhousie Medical School. Over 50 per cent of the region’s doctors are Dalhousie graduates.

The medical school draws upon the best experts in every field, translating research and technological advancements — like focused radiation therapy for cancer, decreased transplant rejection, more effective drugs for Alzheimer’s, and prenatal vaccines for whooping cough — to provide the best possible care for our communities.

2. Students are seeing patients from day one

To get really good at what they do, Dalhousie’s doctors-in-training begin interacting with real patients early — usually within the first week of medical school. On top of this, they’re learning in a variety of out-of-classroom settings throughout all four years of their training.

For instance, the Health Mentors Program provides students the opportunity to learn about chronic conditions and disabilities first-hand from patients living in the community. And the Volunteer Patient Program allows students to practice essential skills, like taking medical histories with the help of community-based volunteers who have health conditions.

The medical school’s patient-centred curriculum also offers elective opportunities for students to explore specific areas of medicine. Often in clinic or hospital settings, electives have time carved out for students to execute a personal project under the guidance of physician preceptors.

3. Every student undertakes a four-year research project

Medical students are introduced to research at the beginning of their training through the Research in Medicine program. The program — a first of its kind in Canada — is designed to give graduates a thorough understanding of the vital role that research plays in today’s health care system.

Research projects cover a wide range of topics. Students are working on addressing the needs of Maritime homeless populations, designing safer treatments for cancer, early autism intervention, outcomes in spinal cord injuries and much more. By the end of their fourth year, students present their research projects at a conference of their choosing and submit a report for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

4. The school’s research has an economic spin-off effect

The school’s health researchers hold a multitude of innovative patents, and many have already launched commercialization projects and spin-off companies. Talented teams such as Treventis, DeNovaMed, DeCell Technologies and Mindful Scientific, to name a few, have created economic growth in the region.

Besides this, the medical school’s research community is attracting other talented people to the Maritimes. This creates new jobs, products, companies and other economic benefits. Within the medical school alone, there are over 1,200 jobs in the local knowledge economy.

5. The medical school holds a Guinness World Record...

...for toenails. Say what you will, but the school boasts over 30,000 clippings – an impressive collection by the Atlantic Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health. And they’re collecting for good reason. The toenails are used to look at things like arsenic and heavy metal exposure, which, for instance, people absorb from drinking well water.

And that’s sets of toenail clippings. So really, there are around a quarter million individual ones.

To learn more about the Faculty of Medicine, visit its website.

This article is part of "Know Your Dal," a 13-week series highlighting Dal's academic community. For more, including more content to come later this week from the Faculty of Medicine, visit dal.ca/knowyourdal.