Program director: Dr. Fadi Elias

Number of positions: One PGY-1 admission per year. The program will review transfer residents on an ongoing individual basis.

Duration: Five years

Hospitals: Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation – primarily Hamilton General Hospital and St. Joseph’s Healthcare

Selection criteria and application deadline: Candidates are graded based on their academic records, the curriculum vitae, the CaRMS application, along with the strength of the references. Please refer to the CaRMS website for all requirements and information on application deadlines.

Minimum training requirements for Pathway 1:

These training requirements apply to those who begin training on or after July 1, 2014.

Five (5) years of approved residency training. Training must incorporate the principle of increasing graded responsibility. This period must include:

1. Two years of foundational training in surgery (please refer to the Objectives of Surgical Foundations Training). This period must include a minimum of:
   1. Two blocks of critical care
   2. One block that provides initial trauma management (e.g., emergency medicine, general surgery, trauma team, orthopedic surgery or plastic surgery)
   3. Four blocks and a maximum of nine blocks of vascular surgery
   4. One block general surgery
   5. One block internal medicine or one of its subspecialties
2. Twenty 26 blocks of approved residency training in vascular surgery, 16 blocks of which must be at a senior resident position. Senior residency is defined as a period of time during which the resident is regularly entrusted with responsibility for preoperative, operative and post-operative care, including the most difficult problems in vascular surgery. The senior resident shall be in charge of a vascular surgery service. No other resident must intervene between the senior resident and the attending staff surgeon.
3. Thirteen blocks of residency selective rotations as approved by the program director and residency training committee, including any combination of the following:
   1. Vascular surgery (up to 7 blocks)
   2. Cardiac surgery (up to 4 blocks)
   3. Thoracic surgery (up to 4 blocks)
   4. Non-invasive vascular laboratory (up to 4 blocks)
   5. Vascular radiology (up to 7 blocks)
   6. Community surgery (up to 4 blocks)
   7. Research in vascular surgery (up to 10 blocks)
   8. General surgery (up to 3 blocks)
   9. Training relevant to the resident’s career goals approved by the program director and residency training committee in advance

Please refer to: Content and Sequence of Training for PGY-1-5 Vascular Surgery (.doc)

Royal College certification in Vascular Surgery requires all of the following:

1. Successful completion of a two-year surgical foundations curriculum
2. Successful completion of the Principles of Surgery examination
3. Successful completion of a Royal College accredited program in vascular surgery
4. Successful completion of the certification examination in vascular surgery

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The program outlined above is to be regarded as the minimum training requirements. Additional training may be required by the program director to ensure that clinical competence has been achieved.

Introduction

As the primary referral centre for a large population in the Hamilton-Brant-Niagara regions, and a tertiary level vascular referral centre for many other parts of the province, we offer our trainees a tremendous volume of experience that covers all facets (both common and rare) of peripheral vascular disease. We have successfully integrated the activity across two primary sites – the Hamilton General and St Joseph’s Health Care (Charlton) – that both play important and complementary roles in the training program, which functions quite well under a single (academic) division, two-site model.

We have established successful relationships with the community-based vascular surgeons and with other services in our hospitals and, in particular, radiology. The latter has allowed us to significantly advance our endovascular activity and give our residents an experience that would be hard to duplicate in many other programs across the country.

The Beamish Family Chair in Vascular Surgery at McMaster University provides significant financial support for the entire division, including our resident trainees. The fund allows faculty to take sabbaticals to learn and master the latest technology, which is then shared with other staff and residents. The chair supports funding for research projects and travel to educational and academic meetings. This is clearly a major asset that will pay both near and long term dividends for our training program.

In recognition of the fact that a quality program is not just about the physicians, it is worth mentioning that we are fortunate to have excellent and committed nurses and allied health staff that play a very significant role in the daily management of our patient population and are a important support and resource for our resident trainees.

This resident manual will provide you the information you need during your residency.

Welcome.

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Contents

1. McMaster Postgraduate Medical Education Policies

2. Vascular Surgery Program Resident Safety Policy (PDF)

3. Chief Vascular Surgery Resident Job Description (PDF)

4. Vascular Surgery Resident Clinical Rotation Job Description (PDF)

5. Goals & Objectives for Vascular Surgery Residents PGY 1-5 (PDF)

6. Program Vision, Mission and Values (PDF)

7. Royal College Objectives in Training in Vascular Surgery (PDF)

8. Royal College Specialty training requirements in Vascular Surgery (PDF)

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Research Tools

• Manual Efficiently Writing Abstracts (PDF)

• Awards and Research (PDF)

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Links

• MedPortal

• Web Eval

• Resident Wellness Support Systems (PDF)

• McMaster Health Sciences Library

• Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

• Professional Association of Residents of Ontario

• Rural Ontario Medical Program (ROMP)