Senior Medical Students’ Appraisal of CanMEDS Competencies

For the development of guidelines for the modernisation of all medical specialty training programmes in the Netherlands, the 7 roles for medical specialists as defined by CanMEDS (Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists) 2000 model were converted to 7 fields of competency: Medical Performance; Communication; Collaboration; Knowledge and Science; Community Performance; Management, and Professionalism. As changes in postgraduate training will probably be most effective if future trainees recognise their value, we set out to determine how senior medical students rated these fields of competency in terms of their importance. Although all key competencies were regarded as important (averages > or = 3.8), Professionalism and Communication scored highest on the student ratings. Management was assessed as least important.