Paediatrics Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2012

Journal

Paediatrics and Child Health

Volume

17

Issue

1

First Page

17

Last Page

20

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1093/pch/17.1.17

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Responsibility for training paediatric medical sub-specialists in Canada lies primarily with the 16 academic paediatric departments. There has been no mechanism to assess whether the number of residents in training will meet the needs of currently vacant positions and/or the predicted vacancies to be created by anticipated faculty retirement in the next five years across the different paediatric medical subspecialties. HYPOTHESIS: At the present time, the training of the paediatric physician is not linked with the current and future needs of the academic centres where the vast majority of these paediatric sub-specialists are employed. METHODS: The academic paediatric workforce database of the Paediatric Chairs of Canada (PCC) for the surveys obtained in 2009/2010 were analyzed. Data included the number of physicians working in each subspecialty, the number of physicians 60 years of age or older, as well as the number of residents and their level of training. RESULTS: There are some paediatric subspecialties in which the actual number of trainees exceeds the currently predicted need (eg, cardiology, critical care, hematology-oncology, nephrology, neurology, emergency medicine and genetic-metabolic). On the other hand, for other specialties (eg, adolescent medicine, developmental paediatrics, gastroenterology and neonatology), assuming there is no significant change to selection patterns, an important gap will persist or appear between the need and the available human resources. CONCLUSION: The present analysis was the first attempt to link the clinical orientation of trainees with the needs of the academic centres where the vast majority of these paediatric subspecialists work. ©2012 Pulsus Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Download

Share

COinS