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Context and Background: Athletic therapy postsecondary education and certification requirements in Canada have reached considerable milestones throughout their history. The most important of these accomplishments was administration of the first Canadian Athletic Therapists' Association (CATA) certification examination in 1975. At that time, there were three basic exam eligibility requirements: (1) core curricular courses; (2) 1800 practical hours; and (3) a valid first aid certificate. The only significant change to these certification requirements occurred in 1976, when the 1800-hour internship requirement was reduced to 1200 hours. However, a documented rationale for this change could not be determined. The noteworthy milestone occurred when the CATA approved a policy stating that, as of September 1999, all future athletic therapy candidates would have to be enrolled in a Canadian accredited program at a postsecondary institution. Although this policy significantly advanced the CATA's postsecondary academic/curricular requirements, the 1200-hour internship requirement has remained unchanged for almost four decades. Objective: The purpose of this commentary is to stimulate discussion about the linkage between the practical-hour requirements and teaching, evaluating, and achieving clinical competence. Recommendations: Recommendations for change are based on lessons learned by other organizations for medical educators and allied health care professions, such as the National Athletic Trainers' Association. One suggestion for change is to hold students accountable for achieving a predetermined level of clinical competence before they move through or graduate from a program. In order to accomplish this goal, students must be assessed with valid and reliable evaluation tools. Conclusion: Therefore, it is important to establish a group of stakeholders who can identify issues and articulate a plan to guide the future of postsecondary athletic therapy education in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the elective choices of medical students may not have major impacts in their residencies in Canada. Also cited are the various opinions on the importance of electives in medical residencies, the purpose of electives as cited by Maylynn Ding of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS), and the plan by medical schools to limit the number of students focusing on single specialty.

The article presents information on the online impact of the Canadian Conference of Medical Education (CCME) via tweets. TweetReach Pro (TweetReach.com) was used to measure the impact of CCME tweets. TweetReach offers analyses of data about tweets and concentrates particularly on how many persons are attained by each tweet.