CanMEDS for South African Pathology Training

Juanita Bezuidenhout
Department of
Stellenbosch Univesity
jbez@sun.ac.za

Background: In South Africa, universities are tasked with training all enrolled candidates, while
examinations are conducted by both universities and a national College of Pathologists (COP).
Successful completion of either permits registration as a pathologist with the Health Professions
Council South Africa. This results in real and perceived inconsistencies between training
programmes, while assessment alignment has never been standardised. The need to establish a
national training and assessment framework is apparent. The first step in this process is to conduct
a needs assessment survey of required outcomes/competencies.

Methods: The Canadian Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons’ competency framework
(CanMEDS), was used to conduct an electronic, 6-point Likert scale needs-assessment survey of
all pathologists and pathologists-in-training.

Conclusions: All CanMEDS roles were regarded as at least somewhat important by the majority
of respondents. At the annual national Federation of South African Societies of Pathology
conference the development of a national framework based on the CANMeds model was
unanimously accepted by the Federation and the COP. The needs assessment survey paves the
way to develop a standardised uniformly accepted model of training and assessment of
pathologists. The CanMEDS roles are all important and should be included in any framework that
is developed in South Africa. It can also be used standardising other postgraduate training
programmes in South Africa.

Powerpoint presentation