The department is an educational leader

Chloe Joynt oversees subspecialty fellowship training programs in the department

Judith Chrystal - 02 July 2019

The Stollery Children's Hospital, Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, and Royal Alexandra Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit offer complex services across a wide range of clinical areas. Providing specialized care requires specialized experts, and specialized experts require specialized training.

Hospitals are where much of this training takes place. "The Stollery is widely recognized as a clinical leader, and together we are educational leaders as well," says Chloe Joynt, an associate professor and subspecialty postgraduate medical education program director. Joynt sees herself as a facilitator to help learners and medical education leads develop and navigate processes, share ideas or resources, and create new training opportunities in the department. "I was a residency program director for neonatology for several years and so I know the kinds of questions that I had at the time. I want to be the person who can help find the answers for others," she explains.

The Department of Pediatrics is increasingly known for its innovative advanced training programs in a range of fields. These include fellowship programs focused on highly specialized areas, as well as training in clinical and basic science research to advance knowledge and further improve outcomes. Joynt notes that the Stollery has expanded many clinical niches (such as pulmonary hypertension and pediatric pain medicine), and that means we can now also teach within those areas. "We're one of the few sites in Canada that can provide that specialized level of training," she says. Physicians from across Canada, and around the world, come to Edmonton learn from members of our department.

One of the major funders of fellowship training is the Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation. The department now receives $1.275 million each year to support physicians in these specialized programs. "Truly, without the foundation's generous funding, we wouldn't be able to run a lot of these innovative fellowships and we would not have been able to retain a lot of these people to then provide care and teach at the Stollery and partner sites. That funding has been critical," explains Joynt. "The ultimate winners are children and families, because they're getting these really well-trained people who have such great expertise. And we have a lot of children that need a lot of great expertise. So it's fantastic."