Innovating to educate paediatric consultant generalists for the new Canadian health care

Abstract

Responsibility for training general paediatricians in Canada lies primarily with the 17 paediatric academic health sciences centres with more programmatic emphasis on subspecialty training and less on preparing residents for general paediatrics. However, the greatest unmet demand in the paediatric workforce will be for consulting paediatric generalists. Here, we define the need for paediatric generalists and list deficiencies in current models to promote more consulting community general paediatricians. The limited presence of general paediatricians as role models reduces the potential for learners to better understand the role of generalists in our specialty. Nationally, we need to advocate for change in teaching models to guide the career choices of our graduates to meet societal needs through better mentorship and educational models that heavily include community-based paediatric consulting generalists. This will be essential to meet our responsibility of supporting primary care colleagues closer to home for our funders, patients and families.