About Sunside
A pediatric clinic built on an unfashionable idea: time
Sunside opened in 2011 with one pediatrician, one exam room, and appointment slots everyone said were too long. The slots stayed. Everything else grew.
The story
Started small. Stayed personal.
Dr. Sanjay Mehta founded Sunside in Westboro after a decade in hospital pediatrics, betting that a community clinic could keep hospital-grade rigour while feeling like a place families actually want to walk into. The bet was mostly about minutes: longer visits, same-day sick slots protected every morning, and a nurse line that answers at night so parents never have to gamble on a guess.
The Orléans clinic opened in 2019 so east-end families could stop crossing the city with car-sick toddlers. Today six clinicians share one philosophy and one record system, so the advice doesn't change depending on which door you walk through.
The name? A parent once described the original waiting room as "the sunny side of a doctor's office". It stuck, and we've been working toward it ever since, in the rooms and in the medicine.
How we practise
Four commitments, kept daily
Evidence first, judgment never
Our advice follows the best available evidence on immunization, sleep, feeding, screens, all of it. And when a family isn't there yet, we keep talking instead of lecturing. Doors stay open.
Time is the treatment
Most of pediatrics is listening. We book longer appointments than we have to, because the tenth minute of a visit is where parents say the thing they actually came to say.
Parents are the instrument
You know your child's normal better than any chart. 'Something is off' is clinical information here, and it's treated that way, starting with the nurse line at 2 a.m.
Twenty years, one record
The clinician who saw the newborn weight checks can see the teen sports physical. Continuity isn't a slogan; it's the entire product.
2
Ottawa clinics, in Westboro and Orléans
6
Clinicians: 4 pediatricians, 2 nurse practitioners
24/7
Nurse advice line for registered families
48h
Newborns seen within two business days of coming home
The team
The people behind the practice
Four pediatricians and two nurse practitioners, with focus areas from newborn feeding to teen medicine. Meet them before you meet them.
- Dr. Sanjay Mehta Pediatrician · Westboro General pediatrics
- Dr. Claire Whitfield Pediatrician · Westboro + Orléans Newborn and infant care
- Dr. Amira Hassan Pediatrician · Orléans Adolescent medicine
- Dr. Rohan Iyer Pediatrician · Westboro + Orléans Development and behaviour
- Kate Moreau Nurse practitioner · Orléans Well-child visits
- Leo Sandoval Nurse practitioner · Westboro Same-day sick visits
Fifteen years in. Care for the next twenty years.
If our way of practising sounds like your kind of clinic, registering takes five short steps.