Postgraduate Medicine Leadership Certificate Program: Building on Success

The Postgraduate Medicine Leadership Certificate Program (PGLC) is founded on the understanding that all physicians are leaders and play an important leadership role in health care. The PGLC is a centralized offering from PGME that fills a gap for trainees seeking to enhance their leadership capabilities through innovative learning and development of a relevant action learning project.

Applications for the second iteration of the program were triple those of last year, attesting to positive reports from the first group of participants, and increasing recognition of the role leadership plays in optimizing quality health care for individual patients and for society as a whole. Building on the success of last year and to meet the increased demand, the total number of participants was increased to 31, and for the first time included fellows.

The course was successfully adapted to a virtual platform and continued to feature informal fireside chats with medical leaders and interactive workshops. Educational imperatives such as ‘Leadership through an EDI Lens’ were added to this year’s curriculum. The online offering has afforded the opportunity to invite all undergraduate and postgraduate medical learners to the fireside chats, and to launch a synchronous satellite pilot at Queen’s University with 6 trainees and a local supervisor.  In response to feedback from last year’s participants a facilitated small group mentorship program, which combines small-group networking with faculty mentorship, was started. The University of Toronto’s Postgraduate Medicine Leadership Certificate Program is unique in Canada and we are proud of its role in fostering medical leadership.