Message from Chair

Welcome to Orthopaedics at the University of Toronto. Orthopaedics at our University has a long tradition of developing innovative treatment approaches, performing research of the highest quality, developing new education programs, and providing clinical care of the highest quality possible. In addition, many of our faculty members played leadership roles in orthopaedics and medicine locally nationally, and internationally. This tradition is as strong today as in our past. Our more than 60 clinical faculty members continue to develop improved orthopaedic treatments, and test their efficacy using the best-designed clinical trials. There are over a dozen non-clinican scientists or clincian-scientists in orthopaedics, who publish research work in top ranked journals such as Nature Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine, in addition to the traditional orthopaedic clinical and research journals. Indeed, the University of Toronto ranks as one of the top three academic centers in the world in numbers of publications each year in orthopaedics. Our education role is stronger than ever, as we are now the largest orthopaedic residency program in North America, and train more clinical fellows each year than any other single University. In addition, we are developing novel educational programs based on high quality research into how to best teach orthopaedics. This has resulted in the world’s first pilot of a competency (as opposed to time) based orthopaedic training program. Members of orthopaedics at the University continue to hold leadership roles outside of our division, for instance as the upcoming president of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association. Our faculty members continue to engage in providing the highest quality of care possible, in undertaking the most innovative research that will ultimately result in improved treatments for our patients, and in developing improved methods to train new orthopaedists. As such, while we continue to be an international leader in orthopaedics, I believe that we have an even brighter future ahead.

Ben Alman
Canada Research Chair
A.J. Latner Professor and Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery
Vice Chair Research, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto
Head, Division of Orthopaedic Surgery and Senior Scientist,
Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology
Hospital for Sick Children