Internal Medicine (Core) Residency Program

1. Overarching Goals

The overarching goals of the program are to train outstanding physicians who: are skilled clinicians with well-developed competencies across all of the CanMEDS roles; have the tools to become future leaders of Canadian medicine, whether they choose to be generalists in internal medicine or to pursue careers as subspecialists; are prepared to meet the needs of the Canadian and global population.

2. Competency Goals for Trainees

The program supports trainees’ achievement of all of the CanMEDS competencies, with special emphasis on the following:

• Achieving a high level of medical expertise with comprehensive knowledge of disease and all aspects of diagnosis and management, as well as sophisticated clinical and problem- solving skills across the breadth of problems in internal medicine;
• Development of excellent communication skills with a compassionate and empathic approach to their patients, including clear explanations and instructions;
• Demonstrating the ability to work collaboratively with all colleagues, with an emphasis on understanding and respecting the roles of collaborating health professionals;
• Acting as leaders of teams, particularly with respect to responsible expenditure of scarce health care resources, being able to audit their practice, and to apply quality improvement tools to investigate and manage their practice;
• Showing strong advocacy for their patients, with an emphasis on understanding and applying the principles and practice of social justice and social responsibility
• Achieving strong scholastic skills, with a focus on evidence-based practice, and having the foundational competencies to be able to pursue scholarship in research, quality improvement, education and/or the humanities;
• Always demonstrating highly professional behaviour with regard to their patients, the profession, society and themselves.

3. Goals for Delivery of the Program

The program’s delivery is oriented around the following major principles:

• Ensuring exposure of trainees to the full diversity of patient populations with internal medicine problems, including the full age spectrum, and patients from various population groups including medically underserved groups such as Indigenous Canadians, those identifying as LGBTQ2S+, immigrants and refugees, those living in poverty;
• Ensuring trainees learn about diagnosis and management of acute and chronic illnesses;
• Ensuring trainees experience a variety of both in-hospital and ambulatory settings;
• Ensuring a balanced blend of teaching driven by patient care experiences together with structured didactic education;
• Emphasizing trainees’ wellness and safety, and a fully supportive learning environment;
• At the same time, providing an environment which challenges the learners to develop their full potential, as clinicians, teachers and mentors for junior trainees, and scholars;
• Ensuring teachers are respected and supported in their professional development.

The goals of the program are conceptualized in three major categories: overarching goals, broad competency goals for trainees, and goals for the delivery of the program.