Our Pledge to be Patient-Centred Medicine is a calling, a call to service. The patient-centred curriculum reflects this noble tradition of commitment to individual patients, their families and community. The physician's covenant is a promise to be fully present to patients in their time of need -- to "be there", even when the physician can offer no cure, to provide relief whenever possible, and always to offer comfort and compassion.
The patient is the centre of our clinical work and, consequently, the centre of our learning. Patient-centred care requires a relationship in which patients will feel that their concerns have been acknowledged and that the physician has understood their plight from each patient's own unique perspective. Patients and physicians must work together to find common ground regarding management -- reaching a mutual understanding of their problems, goals of treatment and respective roles of patient and physician. Patient-centred care also includes the concept of Ecosystem Health which studies human health within the interrelations between economic activity, social organization and the ecological integrity of natural systems.
Our curriculum is a reflection of our responsibility to attend to our patients' suffering in the broadest and deepest sense. Our graduates must have a thorough understanding of the biological, behavioural and population sciences basic to medicine. They will apply their medical learning within the integrated context of patient's lives, families and communities and they must also begin a lifelong quest to understand the human condition, especially the unique responses of patients to their illnesses.
