Prospective Residents | Department of Medicine | School of Medicine

Letter from the Program Director

Queen's University is proud to offer one of Canada's leading programs in Internal Medicine. Fully accredited by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, our core program currently trains 78 residents with approximately 130 faculty (full-time, part-time) in the Department of Medicine. The program is predominantly based at Kingston Health Sciences Center (https://kingstonhsc.ca), which serves the City of Kingston and a large catchment area with approximately 600,000 patients in Southeastern Ontario. KHSC is a tertiary care referral hospital for the region and provides the highest standards of health care.

Highlights of our program include:

Award winning: Our program received the PARO Residency Excellence Award (2018) and the PARO Lois H. Ross Resident Advocate Award (2023)
Acute general medicine training is provided on 4 traditional Clinical Teaching Units (CTUs), exposing residents to the fundamentals of inpatient care. Residents are responsible for emergency room consults and admissions; each team provides medical care for patients on the medicine wards and in the step-down unit (Davies 4 ICU).
A separate CTU E / Medicine Short Stay Unit (MSSU) is a unique rotation that provides complimentary training. This team staffs a 10-14 bed medical short-stay unit where the expected length of stay is less than 4 days.
Subspecialty training is based on rotations through inpatient consultation services and ambulatory clinics. Residents rotate through each of the major specialties and have a number of selective and elective rotations available for additional experience as desired.
Training in intensive care is currently scheduled as an introductory Airway/ICU block in the PGY1 year, and then 2 blocks of the PGY2 year. Experience in managing critical care patients is vital before residents become PGY3 in the program. Residents receive simulation training and a separate educational curriculum during their ICU blocks.
The clinics in general internal medicine are introduced in the PGY2 year and run until the completion of the PGY3 year.
The ER Night Float shift (R2/R3) is from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. (+2 hours for handover) for acute medicine calls.
Hospitalist Service for ALC patients and a resident independent service to help offload CTUs.
Supportive learning environment with 2 senior residents per CTU and 3+ senior residents on-call each night

In addition to providing an outstanding clinical experience, our program is also committed to providing a high-quality educational experience throughout the 3 years of training in preparation for the Royal College Exams and the practice of medicine.

I hope that you will take this opportunity to learn more about the Internal Medicine residency program at Queen's. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Stephen Gauthier, MD, FRCPC
Program Director