Chair's Message

The Department of Medicine of the University of Toronto is one of the oldest and largest in North America, dating back to the establishment of the founding of the School of Medicine in 1843. A major milestone in the Department’s history was the establishment of the Sir John and Lady Eaton Professorship of Medicine in 1919, the first full-time Chair in Clinical Medicine in what was then the British Empire. Today the Department houses over 400 full-time faculty members who are distributed among several teaching hospitals and the University campus, 17 Divisions, and 400 postgraduate trainees and fellows in Core Internal Medicine and in the medical specialties and subspecialties. Members of the Department supervise over 130 graduate students through the Institute of Medical Science, the Program in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research, and through basic science departments to which several members of the Department are cross- appointed. The Department plays a major role in the undergraduate M.D. program, and supports an extensive program of continuing education.

The Department of Medicine has a rich tradition of research that dates back to the discovery of insulin and its clinical application in 1921-22. The Department's direct research funding currently exceeds $60 million annually, of which over $30 million is derived from external peer-reviewed funding agencies. During the past decade, the Department has established three formal faculty development programs: a Clinician- Scientist Training Program for the training of future clinical investigators in the domains of molecular/cellular biology, integrative biology, and clinical epidemiology; a Clinician-Educator Training Program for the training of future educational leaders and innovators; and a Master Teacher Program for enhancing the teaching skills of future and current clinician-teachers.

We hope you will find this website to be interesting and useful, and that it will facilitate your making contact with the faculty members and programs that can meet your needs. We look forward to welcoming you frequently to the Department of Medicine.

Wendy Levinson, MD, FRCP(C)
Sir John and Lady Eaton Professor and Chair