The relationship between
the HSC and the Faculty of Medicine

The HSC is a teaching hospital. It maintains a close working relationship with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Manitoba. Students in the Faculty of Medicine receive a portion of their training on the wards in the hospital. The Faculty of Medicine, in fact, is located next to the HSC.

Many of the hospital's senior medical staff also held positions in the faculty as assistant, associate or full professors, so that they could assume academic responsibility for the education of medical students within the hospital. While such medical staff might have been called upon to provide classroom instruction, much of the teaching that went on at the HSC occurred on the wards. Staff with dual appointments were paid for their medical duties by or through the hospital and received a small stipend for their educational duties from the University.

The hospital's bylaws and policies designated which positions were considered dual (i.e., requiring both a hospital and a faculty appointment). For such positions, both the university and the hospital had to approve the candidate's appointment. For the most part, the heads of medical departments and medical sections in the hospital held dual appointments, including the heads of the departments of Anaesthesia, Pathology, Pediatrics and Surgery.

Heads of the sections of pediatric surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and pediatric anaesthesia were also dual appointees. Individual medical staff may also have had dual designations. In these proceedings, some of the pediatric anaesthetists and the pediatric cardiac surgeon involved in the deaths under review held dual appointments.