GH elective process and guidelines

As part of your residency or fellowship training you may decide to engage in global health experiences outside of Toronto. These experiences can be educationally, professionally and personally rewarding to yourselves as residents/fellows, and to your programs and colleagues. However, they can also pose health and safety risks for you as trainees and for your patients and populations. It is in your interest and the interests of everyone involved in postgraduate medical education to ensure that all global health electives are educationally valuable and ethically sound. Therefore, in collaboration with local and global educators, PGME has developed a Global Health Experience process including Guidelines, Application process, Pre-Departure and Post Elective sessions.

Please begin the global health elective planning process by consulting a faculty member and your program or site director and  reviewing all details here. 

Planning your Elective: Pre-Departure 

You must review the following documents early on in the process of developing your global health elective.

• PGME Global Health Elective Guidelines
• Review PGME Global Health Elective process via graphic below.

When planning your Global Health Elective you are required to:

• Obtain approval from your program director for any global health elective activity. In some programs this requires application and discussion with a global health committee or global health lead within your department. Permission to undertake global health electives is at the discretion of your program director. To be considered for approval, a resident/fellow must be in good standing with their program, have no disciplinary actions pending against them, and must be meeting or exceeding program expectations. Medical, mental health and other interpersonal considerations may affect the program director’s determination of the trainee’s fitness for a global health elective.

• Complete a PGME GH Elective Application 
• Inform j.kopelow@utoronto.ca when your GH Elective Application is completed
• You can make changes to your GH Elective application only from the computer that you originally used.
• At least 4 weeks prior to your elective starting you must complete a formal Pre-Departure Training (PDT) Session.
• You need to complete a PDT session while you are a University of Toronto postgraduate medical resident or fellow; the PDT session must be within two years of the date you will depart for your current planned PGME global health elective. 
• A PDT Session can be completed with your program or with PGME Global Health. 
• For a PGME PDT Session email j.kopelow@utoronto.ca to arrange. 
• Before your PDT session with your program or PGME Global Health complete a PDT Worksheet.
  The worksheet will be discussed as part of your PDT session.

Post your GH Elective complete the following.
Within 8 weeks after your elective is completed you must:

• Complete a Post Elective Evaluation
• Complete Post-Elective Debriefing by completing 1 of the following 2 options:

• 1. Choose to participate in a one-on-one, documented Post-Elective Debriefing with your Toronto supervisor
  OR
  2. Choose to participate in a one-on-one, documented Post-Elective Debriefing with Dr. Barry Pakes,
  PGME Global Health Academic Lead. Please contact j.kopelow@utoronto.ca for this option.

All residents planning a global health elective outside of Canada should review and complete all details. 

Please contact  j.kopelow@utoronto.ca for questions and to send Pre and Post Elective confirmation and documents.