While multiculturalism characterizes our patients and staff, a very significant proportion of our patients have French as a first language.  In addition, off-site rotations around Montreal and in Quebec's rural institutions require our trainees to master both official languages.   Our institution's commitment to serving Quebec's First Nations population offers to our residents additional rich opportunities for exposure to different cultural and clinical contexts.  We also offer a Global Health curriculum with the option to pursue global health electives abroad. 

Our program transitioned to Competence by Design (CBD) in 2021. Our curriculum of clinical rotations and more formal teaching activities offers comprehensive and well-balanced training to our learners. With regards to clinical rotations, the first year of the curriculum is designed to provide a wide breadth of exposure to general pediatrics, including social pediatrics and pediatric critical care. The second year allows residents to explore subspecialties in greater depth. The third year aims at consolidating the acquired knowledge and skills of the first two years, with senior resident responsibilities in core rotations in addition to supplementary elective time. The fourth year of the core residency program is composed of rotations which promote the consolidation and refinement of the skills required for independent practice of pediatrics in a junior staff role. Additional electives or academic training aligned with the needs for future career plans complete the final year.

With regards to more formal teaching, protected academic teaching time, Pediatric Medical Grand Rounds, and Chief-of-Service Rounds take place weekly and are compulsory for all Pediatric Residents. Most rotations have additional service-specific teaching rounds. Pediatric Advanced Life support (PALS), NRP courses, teaching residents to teach online modules and yellow belt training in Lean Six Sigma (quality improvement and patient safety) are offered to all first year (R1) residents with opportunities for recertification throughout training. Further, all R1’s now begin residency with a four-day interactive ‘boot camp,’ designed to provide them with the necessary tools to thrive on call in the CTU and acute care settings. Additionally, a formal curriculum to help residents develop into mindful and compassionate physicians has been implemented into academic half-days. Finally, our program has also implemented a formal research curriculum for all residents in order to help them acquire the basic skills needed to successfully complete a scholarly project. In fact, research is a mandatory component of our program, and residents are required to present their projects at our Annual Pediatric Resident/Fellow Research Day, held jointly with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal. A resident research coordinator supports the residents in meeting the goals and timeline of their research projects.

With over 30 Pediatric Residents, over 110 full-time and 80 part-time Pediatric Staff in the MCH and a large pool of talented and motivated Fellows, our program is an exciting and vibrant place for pediatric training.