Faculty of Medicine
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
Since our inception in 1945, the Faculty of Medicine has provided students with the skills and experience necessary to expertly address the health care needs of the Canadian population. Today, through our undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programs and our graduate programs in biomedical and population sciences, the faculty is recognized as a national and world leader in medical education and research.
As Canada’s only bilingual medical school, our faculty is proud to serve Canada’s three founding cultures, Aboriginal, Francophone and Anglophone, through our distinctive and highly-competitive MD program. Offering courses in both official languages means we give students the opportunity to pursue their education in either the Anglophone or Francophone stream. Additionally, our Aboriginal Program, designed to recruit, admit and support Aboriginal students to study medicine, increases the awareness of Aboriginal culture and health issues for all students. The MD program spans 147 weeks of instruction, 72 weeks of which are devoted to learning in clinical settings. Our students rank among the top in Canada on both parts of the Medical Council of Canada’s licensing examinations and in the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) competitive process. More than 97 per cent of our graduates receive their first choice of postgraduate specialty discipline in the national match.
Through our affiliation agreement with five local academic health science centres, one regional hospital and eight rural health centres, the faculty offers our MD students and residents the opportunity to train with internationally renowned health experts in world class settings. Francophone training is available at the Montfort Hospital. Additionally, students and residents can train through a number of remote health care centres within Canada and through some international electives.
The Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME) program offers a unique bilingual teaching environment with one of the largest foreign trainee populations in Canada. Over the last decade alone, we have increased our number of specialty programs from 40 to 64, and the faculty now ranks among the top three in Canada for its range of specialties. These programs all lead to certification by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) or the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC).
Our MSc and PhD programs are developing tomorrow’s scientific leaders through our five graduate programs, all available at the MSc and PhD levels, and our MD/PhD program. Our students and fellows partner with our esteemed academics to conduct groundbreaking research in the following key areas: neuroscience, cardiovascular diseases, regenerative medicine, emerging pathogens and treatment of infectious diseases, systems biology, growth and development, epidemiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, nutrition and metabolism, immunology, virology and bacteriology.
Our MD/PhD program offers exceptional students the opportunity to pursue two degrees over the course of seven years. Based on a single, integrated curriculum, the program combines the faculty’s existing undergraduate medical school curriculum with approved doctoral graduate programs in biochemistry, biology, cellular and molecular medicine, human and molecular genetics, microbiology and immunology, and neuroscience. Epidemiology will be added in the near future. The driving force behind this newly-created program is to attract the small number of students with a high potential to grow into future leaders in the health sciences and allied fields.
The faculty has experienced the second highest growth rate in overall Tri-Council funding and third highest growth rate in Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding for universities with medical schools since 2003. Maclean’s magazine has also ranked the faculty second in Canada for medical science grants for three years in a row.
In the Faculty of Medicine, we offer you the chance to study in a world class setting, no matter the path you choose to take. Our state-of-the-art clinical and research facilities, including the University of Ottawa Skills and Simulation Centre, which gives health care professionals the opportunity for hands-on training, make us a leader in educational innovation. We are dedicated to delivering excellence in education and research while supporting our students, who are among the best and brightest in Canada.
Welcome!
Jacques Bradwejn, MD, FRCPC, DABPN
Dean