Abstract

The academic health centre (AHC) is the collective encompassing the university and its faculty of health sciences/medicine, the affiliated teaching hospitals and organizations and their education and research structures. Historically, a social contract (White and Connelly 1990) has existed between society and the academic health centre based upon trust and explicitly defined by mutual expectation, and which has consequences in the event expectations are not met. There has been an expectation that the AHC will produce reliable knowledge, apply it in the training of highly qualified personnel, and communicate it to society (Gibbon 1999).