The mission of the Palliative Medicine Subspecialty Residency Program at the University of Toronto is to train outstanding palliative care subspecialists who will use clinical, academic and scholarly skills throughout their future careers to improve the quality of death and dying for patients and family members.

The program meets the specific training requirements set out by the Royal College. Residents will acquire core palliative care knowledge and skills by rotating through palliative care services in a variety of inpatient, outpatient and community settings as they progress through the four stages of training. Trainees will learn about the management of end-stage non-cancer illness through specific rotations in their first year and a longitudinal ambulatory block in their second year. At the end of the second year, the trainee will complete another three blocks of core palliative care rotations during which the trainee will function as a “junior attending” in preparation for their transition to practice. Trainees will have 1 block of research and 2 selectives during their 2-years of training. There is a 4 block ambulatory rotation comprising of non-cancer clinics.

Trainees will be required to complete a scholarly or academic project during the course of their training. This project will be conceived, designed, conducted, analyzed and hopefully published by the trainee, under the supervision of a faculty mentor, on a topic of interest and relevance to the trainee. Elements of the academic half-day are devoted towards concept and design, and helping trainees get their projects going. Projects will be reviewed and evaluated in a peer-review format at the conclusion of the training program, and submitted to the national meeting of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians and the annual Barry Rose Research day at the end of the second year.