Generalism serves as the backbone of medical education by balancing the foundational elements of medicine:

• Basic Sciences: Generalism integrates foundational knowledge in basic sciences with clinical reasoning and practical clinical applications. This approach ensures that students not only understand the mechanisms of disease but also how to apply scientific principles in diverse patient care settings.
• Social Medicine: Generalism acknowledges the critical role of social and structural determinants of health, health systems, population and public health approaches, epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, equity, diversity, inclusion, planetary health, humanities, ethics, and professionalism. It encourages students to consider the broader context of their patients’ lives. Students learn to approach healthcare with empathy, provide culturally safe care, and to act on structural and societal impacts on health outcomes for individuals, communities, and populations.
• Clinical Medicine: The practice of generalism is deeply rooted in clinical medicine, emphasizing comprehensive patient care across specialties. It equips students with the skills to manage a wide range of health issues, promoting continuity of care, shared decision-making, and a patient-centred approach.

Generalism directly supports the Faculty of Medicine’s priority of social accountability by training future physicians who are equipped to meet the healthcare needs of diverse communities. Social accountability in medical education means identifying and prioritizing the health of communities and populations, addressing health inequities, and responding to the needs of underserved groups.

• Community-Centred Care: Generalism encourages students to understand and respond to the health challenges faced by their communities. By building a generalist curriculum, we prepare students to engage with patients from all backgrounds, emphasizing inclusive, equitable care that addresses both medical and social needs.
• Responsiveness to Social Determinants of Health: Generalism fosters an approach to healthcare that considers the social determinants of health, such as socioeconomic status, education, and environment, ensuring that MD graduates are prepared to advocate for their patients and address the root causes of health inequities.
• Commitment to Underserved Populations: By promoting a broad approach, generalism helps address the gaps in healthcare delivery, particularly in underserved areas (e.g., rural remote, inner city) and populations. This aligns with our social accountability mandate to train physicians who are committed to serving equity-deserving populations and improving access to care.

• Model and teach the value of broad-based care. Promote the value of generalist care not just through the formal curriculum (e.g., lectures/large-group sessions, CBLMs, clinical rotations), but also through informal influences such as role modelling and institutional culture. This approach encourages students to see generalist care as important and valuable by embedding it into both the structured educational content and the underlying messages they receive throughout their training.
• Encourage a mindset among students that values collaboration and working with formal and informal interprofessional teams across health care setting and in the community.
• Prepare graduates who can manage complexity, address multimorbidity, and provide comprehensive patient-centred care, including identifying and acting on structural and social determinants of health.

By teaching MD students using a generalist lens, we can better prepare medical students to meet the diverse needs of their future patients. Graduates will emerge with a deeper understanding of the interplay between scientific knowledge, social context, and clinical skills.

• Family medicine is the specialty that focuses on providing first contact, comprehensive, continuous care over time to people within their own contexts and communities. Family physicians manage most health issues, with an emphasis on health promotion, preventive care, chronic disease management, and treating patients within the context of their family, social networks and community.
• Primary care refers to the first point of contact for patients within the healthcare system. It includes several medical specialties, such as family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine and pediatrics, and focuses on providing accessible and patient-centred care. Primary care physicians (often generalists) manage overall patient health and coordinate care with other specialists. Primary care can be provided by many other healthcare providers as well.