Prospective Residents

Highlights of the Psychiatry Program:

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Discover the Clinician-Researcher Track

The Clinician-Researcher Track (CResT) is a new direct entry residency program in psychiatry at the University of Toronto. This unique residency track is designed for graduating medical students with prior research training who are highly motivated to pursue careers as clinician scientists or scholars conducting research or scholarship.

More Information:

  • Prospective CMG (Canadian Medical Graduates) and IMG (international medical graduates) Residents:
    • Canadian Citizens or Permanent Residents who completed their medical training inside or outside Canada should apply through the CaRMS website at.
    • Non Canadian citizens should visit the Post MD Education site.

We highly encourage any applicants interested in applying to CaRMS to carefully review the University of Toronto CaRMS description for Psychiatry.

Out of fairness to all applicants, no individual meetings can be scheduled with the Program Director, Associate/Assistant Program Directors or the Site Directors. Resident leadership may be approached via email to answer questions about their experience in the program.

CanPREPP Virtual Information Sessions - CaRMS 2024 R-1 Match

Event 1:University of Toronto Psychiatry Virtual Information Session

November 15th, 8-9:30PM (EST)

No RSVP required

Join us for an informative presentation about the U of T psychiatry program followed by a question-and-answer period. Our Program Director, Dr. Adrienne Tan, will also be making a guest appearance at this session. This is a chance to meet some of the U of T residents, learn more about the program structure and culture, and to get your questions answered. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information please visit - https://canprepp.ca/

Event 2: University of Toronto Psychiatry Virtual Information Session

December 14th, 12:00-1:30PM (EST)

No RSVP required

Join us for an informative presentation about the U of T psychiatry program followed by a question-and-answer period. Our IMG Program Director, Dr. Petal Abdool, will also be making a guest appearance at this session. This is a chance to meet some of the U of T residents, learn more about the program structure and culture, and to get your questions answered. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information please visit - https://canprepp.ca/

Transfers

Applications will be reviewed by a team of reviewers to determine whether or not the applicant has met the program admission and selection criteria and the standard for an interview. If candidates are deemed acceptable by the program residency training committee, we then attempt to secure funding to support the transfer from the University PGME Office. A position can never be offered until all the funding to support a candidate has been confirmed. Securing funding from the University is an inherently uncertain process and it may take until May or even June before funding capacity is certain.

Please note that there are transfer guidelines to assist with local (University of Toronto) and national transfer requests – both guidelines can be viewed online.

The first point of contact is your home PGME office to register your interest in a possible transfer.

Observerships

In the past, the IMG office used to approve a very small number of applications each year. However, this has been phased out as of January 2016, due to numerous reasons. Despite this, the vast majority of IMG observerships have been obtained by IMGs through their own initiatives (i.e. contacting faculty, hospital departments themselves).

We continue to encourage IMGs interested in securing an observership to:

  1. Review our postgraduate website to learn more about our program
  2. Read and learn about the various activities happening in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto (free public lectures, events like Mindfest, etc.) and participate or attend those events if interested and available to do so
  3. Learn about the various areas of research and education our faculty are involved in and if interested in someone’s work, consider contacting them directly to learn more about their work or their field
  4. Consider contacting the various hospital departments of psychiatry to see if there is someone offering an observership opportunity, or consider contacting individual faculty whose work you’ve read about or learned about to see if they are taking on observers
  5. Attend conferences where University of Toronto psychiatry faculty will be speaking to learn more about their work
  6. Please be aware that securing an observership in our program is not a mandatory part of our selection process for CaRMS (i.e. if you have psychiatry observerships from other programs these are also viewed as valuable)

Please also see the CPSO website which has a link of helpful resources for IMGs

Please be aware that our faculty are very keen to teach and supervise however they also have a number of educational demands placed on them, and many who do offer observerships can only do a few a year as a result. Planning well in advance (often a year at times) is key if you are trying to look for one.

If you have additional questions after reviewing the information above, you can contact the postgraduate office at postgradoffice.psych@utoronto.ca

Dr. Petal Abdool
IMG Director