While attending the 18th Ottawa Conference on the Assessment of Competence in Medicine and the Healthcare Professions in Abu Dhabi last month, we were struck by the prominence given to the integration of human skills across all medical disciplines (Barach, 2018). These skills, which traditional science-based curricula generally regard as secondary to cognitive skill are often referred in basic science literature as nontraditional discipline-independent skills (NTDIS) (Evans and Pawlina, 2015), or in clinical literature as nontechnical skills (Pearson and McLafferty, 2011; Roche, 2016), or simply human factors (Jones et al., 2018). These relate to the demonstration of professionalism, empathy, love, resilience, emotional intelligence, situation awareness, and other such intangible skills and attributes (Pearson and McLafferty, 2011 Barach,2018).Traditionally, in preparing our students for the next stage in their learning journey as potential healthcare professionals, focus within basic science curricula has been directed on providing building blocks for their subsequent training, theories and knowledge as well as a range of disciplinary skills. However, curricula that once provided students with these basic educational units no longer and should no longer focus solely on knowledge-based competencies but instead should promote the development of human skills. Curricula have already begun to be more integrated, holistic, and focused on the patient, a new trend that is gaining momentum even outside of medical education. Undergraduate colleges for example are incorporating coursework relevant to the development of human skills across all disciplines, including the humanities, business, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and health sciences (Idrus, 2014; Cunningham et al., 2016; Husin et al., 2016; Michalec et al., 2018). Interestingly, early childhood education also includes a strong focus on development of human skills with much stronger emphasis on holistic child development than what exists in ...