The McMaster Community and Rural Education (Mac-CARE) Program is the gateway to clinical rotations, in family and specialty medicine programs, in the regions surrounding Hamilton.

The Mac-CARE Program is funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) to support medical students and residents from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. The Mac-CARE Program offers access to rich diversity of high-quality community teaching sites in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. The overall goal of the Mac-CARE Program is to give learners exposure to community and rural practice outside of Academic Health Science Centres.

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McMaster University’s School of Medicine was founded in 1966 with its medical education centred in the Academic Health Sciences Centre in Hamilton. Since 2000, Undergraduate and Postgraduate Medical Education program enrolment has more than doubled, necessitating a network of distributed medical education (DME) opportunities in regions outside of Hamilton.

The distributive learning model is rapidly becoming the norm at medical schools around the world and McMaster is a leader in DME with our undergraduate learners, family medicine residents and specialty residents experiencing the value of medical education in our surrounding communities.

DME at McMaster is organized primarily in two Medical Education Campuses (MECs), providing comprehensive medical education in the Waterloo Regional and Niagara Regional Campuses, as well as clinical rotations in four Clinical Education Campuses (CECs) in the Grand Erie Six Nations, Burlington, Halton and Osler sites. The network of DME site is known collectively as Mac-CARE, McMaster Community and Rural Education.

The McMaster Community and Rural Education (Mac-CARE) Program was developed to increase interest and satisfaction in community practice by placing undergraduate and graduate medical student in designated geographic regions for a portion of their clinical placements. The long term goal is to increase the number of practicing physicians in these communities and ultimately decrease the number of under-serviced areas.

The Mac-CARE Office provides the expertise and support to facilitate core and elective placements in Mac-CARE regions.

At Mac-CARE, we work together to provide quality clinical rotations for medical Learners, realizing the vision, “Together, advancing health through learning and discovery”.

Dr. Dorothy J. Bakker
​Assistant Dean, Mac-CARE Program​