Welcome to the McMaster University Royal College Emergency Medicine Residency Program!

Hamilton is located in Southern Ontario and is in close proximity to other major cities including Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo and the beautiful Niagara Region. Hamilton itself is home to a remarkable Arts and Culture Scene, Restaurants, and nature. Regardless of your interests, we can assure you that you can find it in Hamilton. Hamilton as a city is home to a huge spectrum of people of multiple ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, and medical needs. We also serve as the regional center for an area of nearly 2 million people.

We are one of the largest Royal College Emergency Medicine Programs in the country, however, we are still small enough that you will very quickly get to know all of the faculty, residents and staff in all of our departments. Our Faculty are world-class and come from a number of different backgrounds and have a huge spectrum of interests ranging from Pre-Hospital care, Quality Improvement, Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS), Critical Care and Pediatric Emergency Medicine to name a few. Our Resident group is equally diverse and has a strong belief in equity, social justice, and is intimately involved in any program changes or improvements. We are responsive to resident feedback and a number of the amazing changes in our program have been Resident-driven projects. We have excellent working relationships with both our CCFP-EM Colleagues as well as our Pediatric Emergency Medicine group and host a number of events with all three groups to ensure good working relationships as well as good educational experiences for our residents.

Within Hamilton itself we have 4 Major Teaching hospitals and our residents spend time at all of these sites. In addition, our residents have the option (and are encouraged to) also spend time at one of several available busy community hospitals in our region depending on where their interests lie. Our program is structured in accordance with the Royal College Training Requirements for Emergency Medicine and has been using competency-based training prior to the official launch of Competency By Design by the Royal College. This meant that our faculty and residents were well prepared for the move to Competency Based Training.

Academically we host a weekly, fully protected Academic Half Day for our residents with both faculty and resident speakers, a monthly journal club and a robust simulation curriculum. In addition, we also have a number of boot camps at all the major transitions in Residency to ensure that our residents are well-prepared for their rotations (regardless of where they are). We have a recently developed Wellness Committee/Curriculum that is a resident-driven program to ensure that our residents have the tools and skills needed to thrive during residency. Finally, in order to prepare our trainees for their exams, we hold several practice exams every year including both locally created as well as national exams.

Our residents have multiple opportunities to pursue their own interests during residency training. This can start as early as the start of residency depending on what the area of interest is. Our residents have formal time in PGY5 to pursue an Area of Focused Competence which can be any area of interest that is related to EM or Medicine in general. This sometimes is a more traditional pathway such as Pediatric EM, Critical Care or Point of Care Ultrasound, but has also been new areas such as Narrative Medicine. Some of our residents have developed their own pathways for this time and we are happy to consider almost anything of interest to the resident if it will help them further their careers.

We are very proud of our program, our residents and our graduates and are happy to discuss them further. Our people, our residents and our faculty are the strength of our program. If you would like to speak to the Program Director or Assistant Program Director, please feel free to contact us at our information below. Our Chief Residents are also happy to meet with people who are interested in the program and can be reached at emchief@mcmaster.ca If you are interested in attending our Academic Half Day, please reach out to the chief residents who can arrange for you to do so.

We can’t wait to meet you!