Dr. Olle ten Cate is a true world leader in medical education, and earlier this month Queen’s University was fortunate enough to host him as he taught his course “Ins and Outs of Entrustable Professional Activities.”

Last fall, my understanding of the history of the Queen’s School of Medicine changed when I learned that, in 1918, we had put in place a policy to formally ban Black students. This policy was approved in a motion by the Queen’s Senate, and it was enforced until 1965.

For some time now, those of us who work in medical education have been speaking about the “hidden curriculum.” The hidden curriculum refers to the many different things – ideas, behaviours, norms, values, and so on – that students learn informally while they are in medical school. These are the lessons that faculty members do not set out to explicitly teach students but that we pass on nonetheless.