Welcome New Trainees
Welcome to the University of Ottawa. We hope you are all settling in to your new programs successfully. The PGME Office has partnered with the Office of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to provide educational sessions throughout the academic year to you. The PGME Symposia Series Schedule for the 2024-2025 academic year can be found on each tab above, under the appropriate postgraduate year requirement, along with any remaining sessions from 2023-2024. Updates and/or changes to the schedule will be made regularly to this website.

PGY-1 Residents
First year residents are required to follow a core series of mandatory educational sessions that have been aligned with the new CanMEDS (2015) competency-based learning framework and are designed to cover multiple aspects of the Professional, Collaborator, Communicator, Leader, Scholar, and Advocate roles. Some sessions will be held in lecture style/classroom settings when applicable, virtual format, and the rest will be offered as online modules. We have protected time in the Foundations schedule for you to complete them. Please review each tab above to see what is required of you each year of residency. These courses are mandatory and must be completed by their indicated deadlines and specific to different programs and postgraduate years. 

PGY-1 Family Medicine Residents
The only exception is for Family Medicine Residents, who are required to complete ONE Residents as Teachers (RATS) session, ONE CMPA Resident Symposia Series course, and in PGY-2 ONE Health Advocacy Session as part of the mandatory course requirements. No other session is required as mandatory, but are available as optional should you wish to register and attend. More specific information can be found on the PGY-1 tab above.

PGY-2 All Programs Including Family Medicine
PGY-2 residents will be required to complete the Health Advocacy session. Online registration will be available before July 1st, 2024. All PGY-2 residents will be emailed directly with more information as the planning progresses for these sessions. Multiple dates will be offered at a first-come, first-served basis.

PGY-3 All Specialties Except Family Medicine 

PGY-3 residents will be required to complete the Transition to Practice Session. Online registration is available, residents have been notified on how to register for these sessions. 

Automatic Registration Vs. Online Registration
Automatic registration is for all large group sessions and means that you will be expected to attend these scheduled sessions without registering in advance. All session attendance will be tracked. 

Online registration will be required for the small group sessions listed below because there are multiple dates or session times to choose from. The registration deadline is July 24, 2024. The earlier you register, the more date options will be available to you to choose from. When registered, please be sure to block this time off in advance with your schedulers and  Program Administrators and notify them of your date selections.

Cancellation Policy & Excused Absences
If a resident cannot attend a session, they must email CPD within two weeks of the session to get an excused absence noted on file. Completion of the missed session will be required as soon as possible within the academic year. If the session is only offered once a year, the resident will be required to complete it as a PGY-2 and keep record of their missed requirements. If residents do not follow this procedure and a session is missed without notice, they will be marked as a “Did Not Show” and their department will be billed a penalty fee by the PGME office. An attendance report will be circulated to all of the Program Administrators and Program Directors regularly. It is highly recommended that you complete all of your sessions within your first year of residency, as it only becomes more difficult to complete them the deeper you are into your residency program. Please be sure to request the time off well in advance with your program scheduler to avoid any scheduling conflicts.

Online Modules
Please review the online module requirements listed on the Online Modules tab above, and you will be automatically enrolled to these modules within your Brightspace account. These modules are also part of your PGY-1 and PGY-2 mandatory requirements to be completed by the specific deadlines listed during this academic year.

Certificates & Tracking
After every completed PGME session, should you wish to have a PDF certificate created, please submit your request to CPD. Your Symposia Series session completions will be tracked and filed online through the CPD office and reported to the PGME office.