About Us

The Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University is an academic department with a top-of-the-line education program in family medicine at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate level and a rapidly expanding research program.  There are approximately 30 full time and 540 part time faculty members as well as 100 staff members associated with the department.

The teaching program is a priority for the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University.  We are committed to providing our medical students and residents with the best possible training program, to prepare them for a future practice in family medicine, whether it be in a city, smaller community or rural environment.  There are a wide variety of practice locations available as well as a wide variety of health care delivery models. 

One of our successes is achieving a partnership between community and academia.  These groups, working collaboratively, are role models for our learners and are the stage by which we can grow and expand our model of interprofessional collaboration in care.  It also puts us in a strong position to be a provincial leader in the ongoing transformation of primary care. 

Teams are key to the future delivery of excellent health care in family medicine.  The provision of medical care both nationally and internationally is moving towards the concept of interprofessional care.  McMaster is already there.  We have a multi-facetted program, which combines patient care, teaching and research, making the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University one of the most innovative programs in the country.

The McMaster Family Practice Unit (MFP) and Stonechurch Family Health Centre (SFHC) make up our academic Family Health Team (one of the first in Ontario) where care is provided using the inter-professional model.  The McMaster Family Health Team is a team of health professionals including doctors, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, pharmacists, social workers, dietitians, psychiatrists and more; providing a full range of primary health care to the residents of Hamilton and the surrounding areas.

In addition to our local academic teaching sites, McMaster University has provided community training for over 20 years.  The virtual Community Based Residency Training program offers an alternative training model to that provided in the traditional academic teaching units and provides our residents with the opportunity to train one-on-one with their supervisor in a typical community practice.  All of our teaching sites have internet access, video conferencing capabilities and most have electronic medical records similar to our larger teaching units.

The Department of Family Medicine is also home to the Maternity Centre of Hamilton which is a pilot program designed to recruit and retain family physicians in the area of family practice obstetrics.  This is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, collaborative model that includes family physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers and lactation consultants. It has proven to be a fertile training ground for our learners in all of the above mentioned disciplines.

Our other core mission is in the area of research.  Our research group consists of two full time faculty level researchers, one Research Associate and one Research Coordinator.  There are other staff members working on a variety of funded research projects throughout the department and a number of other faculty members who conduct research as a major or minor activity to compliment their other responsibilities within the department.  Our research department covers a wide spectrum of topics such as cardiovascular health, end of life care, quality of family practice, global health, information technology, mental health, palliative care, care of the elderly, medical education, post-partum and reproductive health.   

While the McMaster Department of Family Medicine is defined by its unwavering focus on teaching, research and clinical care, it is the Divisions (and their people) within the Department that give life to the work of the Department. The Department's three divisions, Emergency Medicine, Palliative Care, and Midwifery, have each been designed to reflect, leverage and contribute to the teaching, research and clinical care mandates of the Department:

• The Emergency Medicine Division provides physicians, who have completed a family medicine residency, with the specific competence to practice Emergency Medicine and the leadership skills to assess, promote, and integrate emergency health services in the community. The Division builds family physicians with a strong foundational in both urban and rural Emergency Medicine through extensive clinical experience and focused clinical research.
• The Palliative Care Division has been designed to be the academic Centre of Excellence for Inter-professional Palliative Care. The Division develops, promotes, enhances, and delivers exemplary inter-professional undergraduate, post-graduate, fellowship and faculty development academic initiatives in the health care field of Palliative Care. This is achieved by supporting academic scholarship and research and bu building coordinated partnerships with affiliated partners, agencies and health care sectors.