Sacré-Cœur

Sacré-Cœur : A Century of Care, Compassion, and Innovation

A major hospital celebrating its centennial!

For 100 years, the Sacré-Cœur team has provided care with heart and expertise, driven by a constant desire to innovate in order to better support and relieve patients.

Sacré-Cœur is also a major university hospital. Its affiliation with the Université de Montréal for more than 50 years has made it a leading site for research and teaching in Quebec.

 

Sacré-Cœur is :

  • +/- 65,000 patients cared for annually
  • Approximately 4,300 employees
  • 405 physicians, 1,420 nurses, 460 patient attendants
  • More than 200 researchers
  • 25% of Quebec’s population — about 2 million people — likely to be referred there one day

 

The Montreal Sacré-Cœur Hospital is a facility of the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal. Its major strategic pillars have been developed over the Hospital’s 100-year history.

  • Respiratory health (asthma and lung cancer)
  • Orthopedics
  • Trauma — intensive care
  • Tertiary cardiovascular health
  • Robot-assisted surgery
  • Sleep disorders

 

 

A rich legacy from great pioneers

The Montreal Sacré-Cœur Hospital is one of the oldest hospitals in Quebec. Founded in 1898 by the Sisters of Providence, Sacré-Cœur was originally a sanatorium designed to welcome the most ill and disadvantaged patients: those with tuberculosis, cancer, or disabilities. It even bore the evocative name “Hospital for the Incurables.”

The Hospital was first located on the Plateau-Mont-Royal, then moved to Décarie Street. Devastated by a major fire, it was rebuilt by the religious community in 1926 on Gouin Boulevard (in today’s Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough). From a sanatorium, it became a general hospital in 1954.

The Sisters of Providence administered the Hospital from its inauguration in 1926 until it transitioned to state management in 1961. Even more than 60 years after this major change, their influence remains, and their values of compassion, respect, and excellence continue to shape the Hospital today.

Care, research, and medical training have played important roles at Sacré-Cœur since the very beginning.

 

Caring

The Hospital’s primary mission since its creation: to provide humane care. To continue this mission while adapting to ever-evolving needs, the institution has undergone several expansions over the years, and new wings have been opened to serve more patients and offer better-adapted care environments. New equipment has also been acquired to keep up with technological progress and provide better care to patients.

Innovating

The Research Centre was established in 1973 by Doctors Fernand Roberge and Réginald Nadeau. Its goal: advance medical knowledge and foster innovation at Sacré-Cœur. And it has delivered! Research is now highly active, and Sacré-Cœur is home to internationally renowned researchers in several fields, including cardiology, orthopedics, trauma, and sleep. For over 50 years, patients have benefited from many extraordinary breakthroughs resulting from their work.

Teaching

The Sisters of Providence founded a nursing school at Sacré-Cœur that trained professionals for more than four decades. Today, the Hospital includes a teaching centre, affiliated since 1973 with the Université de Montréal, where interns and residents are trained by hospital staff and researchers. The Hospital is even a leader in simulation-based training.

 

 

The donations collected by the Foundation since its creation 50 years ago have made it possible to accomplish several major projects at the Hospital, whether for care, research, or teaching. The Foundation has:

  • Acquired numerous specialized and ultra-specialized pieces of equipment, such as the Da Vinci surgical robot, to improve the care provided at the Hospital.
  • Contributed to the funding of facilities or construction projects such as the Research Centre, the Coronary Unit, CARSM, the Integrated Trauma Centre (CIT), and the Nuclear Medicine Department, with the goal of modernizing the care environment, offering greater comfort to patients, and facilitating the work of hospital staff and researchers.
  • Invested in research projects, such as the Canadian Biobank for Sleep Research, which advance our medical knowledge and whose discoveries directly benefit patients.
  • Purchased equipment, including simulation mannequins, to help staff more effectively train the next generation of medical professionals. 

  

Sacré-Cœur is the work of visionaries who dedicated their lives to caring for others. The professionals who have followed in their footsteps since the Hospital’s creation have built on the founders’ legacy while innovating to shape the Hospital we know today.

 

2 areas in which Sacré-Cœur excels!

Sacré-Cœur provides specialized and highly specialized care. Physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists, dietitians, social workers, psychologists, and other professionals collaborate in patient care. This multidisciplinary teamwork helps treat patients better, innovate, and even save more lives.

Sacré-Cœur professionals stand out for their unique expertise in several sectors, such as trauma, intensive care, robotic surgery, and sleep medicine.

 

The Integrated Trauma Centre (CIT)

Sacré-Cœur receives the most complex trauma cases in Quebec (major road accidents, severe assaults, serious falls). Its multidisciplinary team has developed unparalleled know-how in treating trauma patients.

The Montreal Sacré-Cœur Hospital has, through the CIT, the largest tertiary university trauma centre in Montreal. The CIT concept is unique in Canada and is a source of great pride for Sacré Cœur.

The CIT brings together, within shared and modern spaces, the three university mandates it has been given: clinical work, teaching, and research. It includes 32 individual intensive care rooms, including 7 isolation rooms, as well as 4 research laboratories and 6 simulation and teaching laboratories. The simulation centre is an important asset in developing expertise among all critical care professionals.

Trauma care at Sacré-Cœur involves a large team — about 150 doctors, 500 nurses, and 25 researchers, all dedicated to trauma. The CIT brings together intensivists, nurses, pharmacists, researchers, teachers, interns, residents, and other trauma professionals in one place. The goal is to promote information and expertise sharing and leverage each person’s strengths to create true synergy between multidisciplinary teams.

 

 
Trauma and critical care at Sacré-Cœur
  • A unique integrated trauma centre in Canada
  • Home to the only certified helipad in Montreal for receiving severely injured patients
  • A centre of expertise for spinal cord injuries in western Quebec — spinal surgeon Jean-Marc Mac Thiong’s research on ultra-acute spinal cord injury recovery is internationally recognized
  • National designate for care and services to ventilator-assisted tetraplegic spinal cord injury patients
  • Trackside hospital for the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix since 1985
  • Its intensive care unit is renowned for managing severe brain trauma and patients requiring advanced ventilation
  • A researcher from the Research Centre, Dr. Louis De Beaumont, is internationally recognized for his work on concussions — he has built the country’s largest cohort of athletes suffering from the effects of these injuries

 

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The Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine (CARSM)

At Sacré-Cœur, sleep has been studied for more than 45 years. Dr. Jacques Montplaisir founded the hospital’s first sleep research centre in 1977.

Nearly 40 years later, the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine (CARSM), which welcomed its first patients in 2011, has become a unique global model of interdisciplinary research and is internationally recognized. CARSM’s mission: generate new knowledge on sleep and understand, diagnose, treat, and prevent sleep disorders.

CARSM includes a clinic and a research group of 6 physicians, 20 researchers, 60 employees, and more than 50 graduate students. It also features 5 laboratories dedicated to sleep research  focusing in particular on insomnia, hypersomnia, Parkinson's disease, traumatology and children's sleep.

Each year, the CARSM clinic receives more than 2000 patients for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia, restless leg syndrome, hypersomnia, narcolepsy, REM sleep behaviour disorder, and sleepwalking. Patients are referred from across the country, and even from Europe and the United States.

The CARSM team is also guardian of the Canadian Biobank for Sleep Reasearch, which holds more than 40,000 samples of blood and 30,000 sleep recordings available for research — plus an entire data infrastructure with clinical information from the same patients who consented to share their samples. It is a true gem within Sacré-Cœur.

 

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Other areas in which Sacré-Cœur stands out

 
Cardiovascular health
  • Expertise in surgery of large intrathoracic vessels, making it the referral centre for all thoracic aorta trauma — a unique role in the province
  • One of the few institutions in Quebec performing robot-assisted cardiac surgery
  • Home to the second-largest cardiology team in Montreal
  • Its Jean-Jacques-Gauthier Cardio-Respiratory Rehabilitation Centre is the result of a unique partnership in Quebec and offers innovative rehabilitation programs

 

 
Respiratory health
  • Thanks to its Asthma and Work Centre, it is a world reference and one of the major hubs for research on occupational asthma
  • One of two centres in Quebec offering hyperbaric chamber treatments

 

 
Orthopedics
  • A Canadian reference in orthopedics, home to the largest clinic in this field in Quebec

 

 
Bariatric surgery
  • The only centre where 100% of bariatric surgeries are performed using minimally invasive techniques

 

 

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