Pediatric Infectious Disease Residency Program
Welcome to the Pediatric Infectious Disease Residency Program at the University of Alberta.
Large Catchment Area: Referral Base of More Than 1.7 Million
High acuity, complex quaternary care at a world class facility: Stollery Children’s Hospital has 236 beds. It is the second largest children’s hospital in Canada. More than 40 percent of children treated at the Stollery are from outside the Edmonton area, with patients coming from northern British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut, Yukon and Northwest Territories. Children in Western Canada and the territories who need pediatric cardiac surgery are referred to the Stollery. The Stollery is also a national leader in pediatric organ transplantation.
Nationally and Internationally Recognized Faculty
Our varied clinical and academic interests include RSV and other respiratory viruses, transplant infectious diseases, vaccine safety and effectiveness, medical education, and antimicrobial stewardship.
A Pediatric “Hospital Within a Hospital”
Residents work closely and benefit from joint scholarly and educational activities with adult ID and medical microbiology trainees.
Interview/CaRMS Specific Information
You will meet with the Program Director, the Divisional Director, the current trainee, and a number of our teaching faculty. Interviews may be conducted with individual faculty members or with a panel of two or more faculty members. These interviews will seek further details on your application, your career aspirations, your motivation for seeking a position at the Stollery Children's Hospital, as well as your communication skills. We will also try to incorporate a virtual tour of the Stollery Children’s Hospital with our current trainee. We will provide time for you to ask questions and interact online with our current trainee and members of our division.
After review of the submitted application dossier, candidates will be selected and invited for an interview. Interviews will be conducted virtually. Although this is different in style from previous years, the advantage is that travel to the Stollery Hospital site will not be necessary. Interviews will be conducted using the Zoom platform.
Contact Us
Pediatric Infectious Disease Residency Program
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases,
University of Alberta
Dr. Alena Tse-Chang
Program Director, Pediatric Infectious Disease
Email: awtse@ualberta.ca
Anita Reff
Medical Education Program Coordinator
Email: pedsid@ualberta.ca
Dr. Alena Tse-Chang
Program Director
Anita Reff
Medical Education Program Coordinator
Welcome to Our Program
Welcome to the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Program!
Our friendly program at the University of Alberta is the perfect home for training in Pediatric Infectious Diseases. Our faculty are committed teachers with great breadth and depth of ID knowledge and experience. Our patients are complex, providing great experience managing infections in patients with critical illness, solid organ transplantation, and post-cardiac surgery. Scholarly activities abound.
Together with our education team, including our Program Administrator, faculty members, and PGME office, we maintain a standard of excellence in clinical teaching, and exposure.
Dr. Alena Tse-Chang
Program Director
Our Program
We are a fully accredited program that follows the guidelines set out by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. At the end of your two year training, you will have the foundational knowledge and skills to launch your career as a Pediatric Infectious Diseases consultant.
Program Highlights
Trainees in our program receive daily teaching from the faculty when they are on the clinical service.
There is an excellent working relationship with the microbiology and the adult infectious diseases physicians.
Trainees from all three programs have many joint formal teaching sessions and a joint journal club.
The Provincial Lab for Public Health (ProvLab) - North is located within our hospital. Clinicians and staff from ID, Public Health, and Microbiology attend our weekly "Infectious Diseases Rounds" and provide valuable insight and collaborative opportunities.
We have a close relationship with community pediatricians.
We educate the residents in all the steps involved in designing and completing a research project.
Residency at a Glance
Infectious Disease services are primarily provided as inpatient consultations (general pediatrics, PICU, NICU) at the Stollery Children’s with a smaller number of patients seen at one weekly outpatient clinic. Residents spend a minimum of 11 blocks on this service. While on service, the ID residents either see inpatients initially on their own, review them with another trainee prior to them being presented to the staff physician, and/or participate as the other trainee presents them to the staff physician, such that they can learn from every inpatient on which we are consulted.
At the end of this time, it is expected residents will have become familiar with the common presentations, investigations and management of pediatric infections. They will also know how to assess and investigate patients with less common presentations, and will know how to efficiently retrieve and utilize data concerning all pediatric infectious diseases.
For their last 3 blocks, residents function in the role of Junior Consultant and should function almost independently.
Teaching Hospitals
The primary training sites for the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Training Program are at the Stollery Children’s Hospital and University of Alberta Hospital. Other sites include the Royal Alexandra Hospital and Dynalife Laboratory.
Resident Testimonials
We asked our residents what their highlights of the program are, and one piece of advice they would give applicants about the interview process. Here is what a few of them had to say:
What are the highlights of the program for you? Connection with many other pediatric subspecialties and being exposed to many interesting aspects of ID: HIV from Northern Alberta program, working close with TB and STI clinic, Cardiovascular surgery program, Solid organ transplant, PICU care. While enjoying all these, the opportunity to be led in each step of the way by experts in several ID fields - vaccines, tropical medicine, immunology to mention a few- with a solid research background.
What is one piece of advice that you want to share with applicants about the interview process? Share what your interests are and tell your story. I am sure that in order to be here you have worked really hard (hard work leads to great stories)! This will let each other know how the program will help you in building a strong career path.
What are the highlights of the program for you? The Peds ID staff are really welcoming and supportive, with expertise in a wide range of fields. The Stollery Children's Hospital is an amazing centre with extensive transplant and cardiac surgery capabilities and a huge catchment area, so there's no shortage of interesting cases.
What is one piece of advice that you want to share with applicants about the interview process? A little cliché but I would say to just be yourself! You'll get great training wherever you go but you want to make sure you and the program are a good match for each other.