Fellowships | Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine | School of Medicine

Fellowship Program

The Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Queen's University offers post-certification fellowships in General Clinical Anesthesiology, Simulation and Medical Education and Point-of-Care Ultrasound. The fellowships are normally offered for 12 months but may be extended to 24 months after approval by the department. Please see the descriptions of each fellowship at the left side of this page.

Queen's University is one of the oldest universities in Canada and is located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Kingston is ideally situated between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Syracuse, New York. It is a historical city, Canada’s first capital, and famous for its post-secondary educational institutions, its strategic military location at the confluence of Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Rideau canal systems (a UNESCO World Heritage site), and its excellence in sailing and outdoor recreation. Kingston has a population of approximately 150,000 people, large enough to have all the amenities of a big city, but small enough to have a friendly atmosphere and a walkable, vibrant downtown.

Kingston Health Sciences Centre encompasses two separate teaching hospital sites, Kingston General Hospital (KGH) and Hotel Dieu Hospital (HDH) which, collectively, perform more than 15,000 surgical cases in all subspecialties each year. Kingston General is a 440-bed trauma and tertiary care center, the regional high-risk obstetrics centre with approximately 2,000 deliveries per year, and is home to the Acute Pain Service. The Hotel Dieu is an ambulatory medical centre with both outpatient and short term inpatient surgeries, Chronic Pain Clinic and interventional suite, and the Presurgical Consultation Clinic.

For further information or to submit an application form, please contact the Fellowship Program Coordinator:

Dr. Camila Arango-Ferreira

c/o Ainsley Gilson
Queen's University
Department of Anesthesiology
Kingston General Hospital
76 Stuart Street
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 2V7
Canada
Tel: (613)-548-2366
E-mail: ainsley.gilson1@kingstonhsc.ca

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Fellowship Requirements

Prospective fellowship applicants must provide the following in their application package:

Copy of Medical degree (original and English translated version if applicable)
Copy of Specialist degree (original and English translated version if applicable)
Letter of intent
- Please include a description of independent clinical experience. Applicants should highlight specific areas of clinical experience, including procedures and patient populations.
Up-to-date Curriculum Vitae
3 original and recent letters of reference sent directly from referees (English translated if applicable)
English proficiency results as per CPSO considerations:
- CPSO language Proficiency
- IELTS (academic version) minimum score of 7.0 in each component, within the last 24 months
- OET-Medicine: minimum grade B in each subsrt, within the last 24 months
- CELPIP-General: minimum score of 9 in each skill, within the last 24 months
- TOEFL-iBT: overall score of 93, with a minimum score of 24 in speaking

Timeline:

International Application due date: August 31^st(for next year's July 1^st start date)
Canadian Application due date: September 30^th (for next year's July 1^st start date)
Interviews will be held in late September/ early October
Successful candidates will be sent offers by October 15^th

Past Graduates

Graduation Year	Fellows
2024	Dr. Dana Archibald
2023	Dr. Camila Arango-Ferreira, Dr. Angela Bulies
2022
2021	Dr. Sarah Maxwell
2020
2019

All applications and further questions may directed to:

Ainsley Gilson
Queen's University
Department of Anesthesiology
Kingston General Hospital
76 Stuart Street
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 2V7
Canada
Tel: (613)-548-2366
E-mail: ainsley.gilson1@kingstonhsc.ca

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General Clinical Fellowship

Overview

This fellowship is designed to provide enhanced broad-based clinical training and responsibility beyond the certification level as well as offers clinical research opportunities. It is intended to meet the needs of those interested in pursuing either an academic career or in furthering their clinical skills prior to entering clinical practice. Fellows will primarily practice independently, however, attending staff will be immediately available.

Specific Objectives

At the completion of this program, the fellow will be able to:

Manage anesthetics in a wide variety of elective and emergency situations in the operating room. There are also opportunities to participate outside of the operating room (e.g. labour and delivery, acute pain service, cardioversions, radiology suite (diagnostic and interventional) and pre-operative assessment clinics)
Manage anesthetics for patients with severe co-morbidities and/or having complicated surgical procedures
Provide anesthesia consultation services to other specialties
Work appropriately with interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams in the perioperative setting
Manage learners and their educational needs in the operating room (e.g. residents, medical students and paramedical personnel)

If a fellow has an interest in a particular subspecialty of anesthesiology, that should be brought to the attention of the coordinator within the first two months. At that time, we will aim to designate up to 25% of their clinical time to that area of interest, and enlist support from faculty members in that subspecialty. Further efforts will be made to develop reading lists and research projects to help increase the fellow's expertise in that area.

Expectations

Fellows will spend approximately 80% of their time in the clinical environment. They will be expected to manage their cases independently, however they will always have a supervising staff on site for consultation and assistance. They will also be expected to supervise and teach medical students, residents and respiratory therapy/anesthesia assistant students in the operating room setting. Fellows will be expected to participate in late calls during the week (Monday to Friday) and one weekend call day per month. Note that all night work will be supervised.

Approximately 20% of their time will be spent on clinical research or study. Fellows are expected to participate in at least one research or scholarly project, with the goal of completing their project by the end of the year and submitting the results for publication and/or presentation at a recognized conference.

Fellows are expected to participate in the academic activities of the department including rounds, conferences and journal clubs. Specifically, they will be expected to present one Grand Rounds and one core resident teaching session (together with a staff member). They will also be expected to participate in weekly case management rounds, presenting at least once over the year. These cases will then be open for discussion from the other fellows, residents and staff members. There will also be bi-monthly chart reviews with the fellow, the fellowship coordinator and the program director where the fellow will be asked questions pertinent to specific charts that are pulled for the occasion. This will be more a 'one-on-one' style in order to ascertain the fellow's knowledge base, judgment and decision-making ability.

The fellowship year is designed to improve your skills as an anesthesiologist and further your career. To meet that end, the programme is constantly being revised and modified to suit the individual's needs. Please make those needs known to the fellowship coordinator, and we will do our best to design your fellowship to optimize your experience.

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Simulation and Medical Education Fellowship

Queen’s Anesthesia and Simulation

The Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Queen’s has been performing high fidelity simulation for more than a decade. There are 9 anesthesiologists involved directly in simulation for resident education, including 4 with simulation fellowships. Additional involvement includes high fidelity and skills training for undergraduate clinical clerks and high fidelity interprofessional and interdisciplinary training for nurses, anesthesia assistants and other surgical subspecialties, respectively. The Clinical Simulation Centre at the Faculty of Health Sciences building is a fully staffed, functional and RCPSC accredited centre containing access to all simulation resources.

Goals of the Fellowship:

Graduating fellows from this program will depart with the knowledge, skills and abilities to provide simulation-based education, to utilize educational theory and to pursue research in the field of healthcare simulation. They will have sufficient skills to enhance the education of healthcare trainees and practitioners.

3 Pillar Approach:

The curriculum is based on 3 major pillars: Simulation-based education, educational theory pertaining to simulation, and simulation-based research. Each pillar in turn contains a number of major concepts that will be covered.

Objectives:

By the end of this one year fellowship the graduate will be able to:

Describe the importance of simulation-based education in the development of safe, effective healthcare providers and patient care. This includes knowledge about the history of simulation in healthcare, different simulation modalities, crisis resource management, interprofessional and interdisciplinary team training, and the role of simulation in patient safety.
Develop simulation curricula for the purpose of educating healthcare personnel, based on sound principles of curriculum development, and keeping in mind the level of the learner and the purpose of the educational event.
Coordinate and implement simulation sessions for a multitude of learners. This includes working with a technical team and actors to deliver scenarios, observing behaviors of the participants during the sessions, as well as performing post-scenario debriefs.
Apply educational theory pertinent to simulation-based education in the development of learning events and for research. These include, but are not limited to, deliberate practice, mastery, experiential learning, self-regulated learning, and the theory of adult learning.
Describe the role of assessment in simulation-based education, including assessment strategies applied to simulation-based events, as well as using simulation as an assessment strategy in itself. This includes both formative and summative applications.
Apply knowledge of quantitative and/or qualitative research methods to complete a simulation-based research project. Additional help with research methodology comes from the support of Queen’s Office of Health Sciences Education.

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Point-of-Care Ultrasound Fellowship

SONography Collaborative (QSONIC) is a group of acute care clinicians with expertise and interest in point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) who actively collaborate to promote POCUS as a competency in a way that transcends the boundaries of individual medical specialties. Our faculty include experts in Point-of-care Ultrasound from the departments of Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Anesthesiology, Cardiology and Internal Medicine.

Point-of-care ultrasonography (POCUS) has become the standard of care for timely and accurate evaluation and treatment of acutely ill patients. Most acute care disciplines require mastery of basic POCUS skills, but many specialties have advanced expertise in POCUS applications specific to their discipline. By capitalizing on the expertise and experience of POCUS educators from varied specialties, the QSONiC POCUS fellowship program at Queen’s University provides learners with training in the true breadth of POCUS applications. This comprehensive, multidisciplinary model is unique among other POCUS training programs in Canada.

The QSONiC fellowship training at Queen’s initially focuses on mastery of the fundamental aspects of POCUS: image acquisition, image interpretation, and clinical integration for a variety of acute care POCUS applications. Once proficiency in these skills has been developed, fellows progress to learning how to create POCUS workshops, develop curricula, manage a fellowship training program, interact with biomedical engineering and industry, and provide quality assurance and feedback to learners. Graduates of the QSONiC fellowship will be well equipped to become POCUS Directors and leaders in POCUS education and research.

This training is delivered collaboratively through application of POCUS in Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Anaesthesiology, Cardiology, Internal Medicine, and Pain Medicine settings. Fellows predominantly use Sonosite PX and XPorte ultrasound machines. All studies are archived and reviewed using QPathE middleware. A comprehensive curriculum is delivered through academic half-day seminars, image review rounds, journal clubs, and a series of procedure cadaver workshops. Graduates will have competence in full body diagnostic POCUS, including transesophageal echocardiography, as well as procedural POCUS. Most graduates challenge the National Board of Echocardiography’s Examination of Special Competence in Critical Care Echocardiography and/or the Examination of Special Competence in Advanced Perioperative Transesophageal Echocardiography.

The QSonic Fellowship is 12-months in duration. Fellows rotate through various clinical POCUS rotations but continue to work half-time clinically in their home discipline throughout the fellowship.

Who is Eligible?

The QSONiC fellowship is open to any physician specialist that provides acute care to patients. Typically, candidates are from Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Medicine (either CCFP or FRCP), Anaesthesiology and Internal Medicine. However, compelling candidates from any discipline will be considered.

Canadian fellows who have an independent CPSO practice license are typically funded through the Queen’s University’s department of their home speciality while performing approximately 50% full-time clinical duties in that discipline. Availability of funded positions is dependent on the current needs of that department and the suitability of the fellow for that practice at Queen’s University and the Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC). Opportunities for Canadian fellows to self-fund their fellowship while clinically working elsewhere are considered if funded positions through Queen’s are unavailable.

Canadian FRCP PGY5 Emergency Medicine Residents and General Internal Medicine Fellows can do our fellowship as an area of concentrated expertise during their regular EM/GIM training while continuing their clinical roles in their home program at an approximate 50% reduction.

International sponsored trainees are eligible for the fellowship but must be sponsored by an acceptable source of funding (eg. foreign government, foreign government agencies, health related charitable organizations or department). Queen’s University has postgraduate training agreements with the following countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Interested candidates who are not mentioned in this list of countries would need to contact us directly to see if their specific department of discipline has the ability/interest to fund an international fellow. Please see PGME Clinical Fellowships for specific International Application information from the Postgraduate Medicine Office of Queen’s University.

Application Details

Interested applicants are encouraged to submit the following by the due dates listed below for the year before they wish to begin POCUS training. Training typically begins July 1^st. Off-cycle candidates will be considered but can only enter the program in Blocks One (July 1^st), and Eight (mid-january):

Curriculum vitae (CV)
A letter of intent that includes:
- Why they wish to pursue special training in point-of-care ultrasound
- A description of the scholarly deliverable they hope to complete during training
Three letters of reference
Copy of Medical Degree
Copy of Specialist Certification (SC), or MCCEE Part 1 if trainee does not have SC
If international applicant, please also include the additional components outlined on the Queen's University Clinical Fellowships webpage

Timeline

International Application due date: August 31^st(for next year's July 1^st start date)
Canadian Application due date: September 30^th (for next year's July 1^st start date)