Pediatric Surgery

The Outside of the Stollery Children's Hospital

We are a world leader in pediatric transplantation and pediatric congenital heart surgery and research. The high volume of cases includes all subspecialty areas of surgery. Our surgeon-scientists access the Stollery Children's Hospital, which is recognized internationally for specialized surgical services.

Research

Surgeons within the division are active in both clinical and basic science research. Research includes complex congenital heart surgery, surgical management of craniosynostosis, brachial plexus reconstruction, complex tracheal reconstruction, inflammatory bowel disease and sleep disordered breathing in children as well as surgical oncology.

fellowship

Clinical Fellowship in Pediatric Otolaryngology

The Pediatric Otolaryngology Clinical Fellowship at the Stollery Children’s Hospital, University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada was founded in 2004 to enhance our educational role nationally and internationally.

Eligibility:

The fellowship position requires the applicant to have completed residency training in Otolaryngology and to have successfully passed licensing examinations in their country of origin. The fellowship is open to Canadian, as well as non-Canadian trained Otolaryngologists. Foreign medical graduates must be able to obtain a training visa for Canada and an educational license for Alberta. It is important to note that as per The College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta, unless exempt, candidates are required to have completed the academic version of an English Language Proficiency (ELP) test within 24 months before submitting your CPSA application as noted on their website.

The Stollery Children's Hospital
The Stollery Children's Hospital, located within the University of Alberta Hospital, is home to a mosaic of highly skilled child health professionals from many countries around the world. They have made this "hospital within a hospital" into a well-recognized centre for complex and specialized services. We care for children from Northern Alberta, including Edmonton and the metropolitan area, as well as Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut. For Pediatric Otolaryngology the population served is arguably in excess of two million. Please click on the link above for complete details regarding the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

Description of Services
The service is a busy subspecialty in the Stollery Children’s Hospital under the jurisdiction of the Division of Pediatric Surgery and closely tied to the division of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery (OHNS). The vast majority of the services are delivered in the Stollery, we cover all city hospitals and visits may be made to the other neonatal intensive care units.

A broad range of surgical repertoire is offered; open and endoscopic structural and functional airway procedures, cochlear implantation, mastoidectomies and tympanoplasties, saliva control procedures, sleep nasopharyngoscopy guided surgery, endoscopic nasal procedures, and developmental and oncological neck surgery. Multidisciplinary cases with other Pediatric surgeons, adult Skull-base surgeons and OHN surgeons are often undertaken. Joint endoscopic assessments along with pediatric Pulmonologists and Gastroenterologists are commonly undertaken for swallowing disorders and complex children with respiratory multi-factorial disease.

There are many multidisciplinary collaborations and clinics:

Complex Pediatric Airway reconstruction team (Dr. El-Hakim and Dr. AlAklabi – Cardiovascular Surgeon)

Aerodigestive & Aspiration Clinics

Cleft Lip and Palate Clinic

Tracheostomy Clinic

Voice Clinic

Vascular Malformations clinic

Research Scope and Activity
Despite the overriding clinical nature of the training program, clinical research is desirable and encouraged. Dr. El-Hakim, guides and supervises the process; from the inception, planning and allocation stages to the execution and analysis. Monthly meetings for monitoring research progress are expected. The critical appraisal journal club serves as a hunt for ideas with structured literature searches and evaluations directed at clinical problems seen on a regular basis in the center.

Academic Meetings / Journal Clubs

Pediatric Otolaryngology Journal Club – monthly meetings. A critical appraisal of selected articles and Dr. El-Hakim leads the meetings. This is a forum for structured teaching of research methodology and evidence based medicine, in addition to core subjects.
OHNS Journal Club - monthly meetings. Discussion of 3-4 articles from otolaryngology literature.
OHNS divisional grand rounds (weekly)
Pediatric Surgery grand rounds (monthly)
Department of Surgery Grand Rounds (monthly)
Department of Pediatrics Grand Round (weekly)
OHNS Residents Research Day (annual – first Friday of May)
Attend and participate in at least one of the major otolaryngology meetings in North America (AAO-HNS , SENTAC & ASPO), or an alternative in Europe if agreed upon with the director.

Allied Services
Audiology service. All modern investigative techniques are available and provide a health of experience to the fellows. Another rehabilitation center (The Glenrose Hospital) houses advanced Speech and Audiology services; their scope is mainly children with multiple disabilities.

Speech & Language Pathology. The team covers out-patient and inpatient consults with bedside, functional endoscopic evaluation of swallowing and video-fluoroscopic assessments.

General Duties and Responsibilities of Fellows
This is a one-year duration which is primarily clinical in nature. Specific clinical responsibilities for the fellow are as follows:

Help maintain the consultative service for otolaryngology.

Provide direct and daily input to the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units with respect to airway management.

Attend all surgical or endoscopic operative cases that evolve out of the above activities.

Attend major surgical cases unique to the practice of pediatric otolaryngology.

Attend daily ward rounds.

Maintain a collegial and collaborative working relationship with the resident(s) and other staff.

Provide on call cover, under supervision of staff pediatric Otolaryngologists. The fellow takes part in a 1:3 on-call roster; this is complemented by the rotating otolaryngology resident and the pool of otolaryngology residents attached to the adult service. The fellow does not cover the adult on call.

Objectives and Expectations of Fellows
The aim is to train a professional, clinically and academically competent candidate:

Professional
Compliance with the structure of the program, leadership of the director.
Respectful interaction with peers, other specialists & allied health workers.
Compliance with the prescribed study (2 weeks), statutory leave, and holidays (4 weeks) and disclosure of any reason that may hinder meeting these obligations.
Reporting feedback appropriately through the mid-term and final evaluation processes, and provision of final report on activity and experience at the end of training.

Clinical
Timely and completely meeting daily clinical assignments.
Documenting prospectively an operative log book and producing it (or at least a summary) to the director at mid- and end of term evaluations.
Timely and appropriate response to feedback on clinical performance and progress.
Sharing an equitable on call and daily clinical roster with the residents and reporting to the fellowship director on proposed arrangement or changes prior to implementation.
Responsible use of allocated clinical resources (equipment, computers, instruments, records, etc.)

Academic:
Working on under guidance of the program director to enhance research methodology skills, practice of critical appraisal, and allocation of appropriate research projects.
Working towards producing two manuscripts during the year.
Presentation at local, national or international venues as committed and agreed upon with the primary investigators and the fellowship director.

Timetable:
There are two teams (composed of two staff surgeons). The fellow alternates with the resident to work on these teams.

Funding:
Specific inquiry is encouraged through the program director. The Stollery Hospital Foundation has graciously supported the fellows financially throughout the years with very few exceptions.

Accreditation:
The fellowship is not accredited, given the lack of an accreditation body and process for accreditation in Canada for Pediatric Otolaryngology fellowships.

Application Process:

The completed application should be emailed to Cynna Reyes at cynna@ualberta.ca and include:

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
Three letters of reference with contact information for each
A personal covering letter outlining the candidates interest in the fellowship, as well as future career plans upon completion of the fellowship
A copy of any recent and relevant publications

If granted, an interview will occur in Edmonton giving the applicant an opportunity to see the facilities available for the fellowship for one week. Customarily, within two months from the interview date, the successful candidate will be informed once the committee has taken the decision and the funding for that particular year has been secured.

For application or inquiries, please contact:

Cynna Reyes, Assistant to

Dr. Hamdy El-Hakim, FRCS (Ed), FRCS (ORL) Pediatric Otolaryngology Fellowship Program Director Research Director for the Division of Otolaryngology 2C3.58 WMC, 8440 – 112 Street NW Edmonton AB T6G 2B7

Phone: 780-407-8629 Fax 780-407-2004

Email: cynna@ualberta.ca

Clinical

The division established the first Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) program in Western Canada. ECMO involves the use of extracorporeal circulation to provide heart and lung bypass support for infants and children with critical lung and heart disease. Advanced thoracoscopic and laparoscopic surgery is also a featured program within the division. We covera all subspecialty areas of surgery, including cardiac surgery, general surgery, orthopedics, otolaryngology – head and neck surgery, plastic surgery, urology and neurosurgery.

Facilities and Technology

Clinical activity is based at the world-renown Stollery Children's Hospital, a major pediatric trauma centre. A recent assessment by Accreditation Canada has resulted in the hospital receiving “Trauma accreditation with distinction. It is the second-largest pediatric hospital in Canada. About 10,000 procedures are performed annually at the hospital, which also hosts 25,000 surgical clinic visits per year.

A recently completed $36-million redevelopment of the hospital's operating suite gives it nine operating rooms in total, seven of which are state-of-the-art suites boasting modern infrastructure and equipment: Five new operating rooms and two new procedure rooms. All operating rooms have been designed with modular and mobile equipment to meet the needs of all surgical disciplines, allowing for increased surgical activity through more efficient use of space and equipment. These facilities have been developed with the principle of "family centered care" as its primary focus.

Another brand new facility that the surgeons access is the $16.1-million Stollery Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) housed in the sixth floor of the world-class Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute, where all pediatric cardiac procedures are performed. The 16-bed PCICU offers single-patient rooms where family members can sleep overnight. Single patient rooms enhance infection control measures and improve sleep patterns for patients.

Education

Teaching remains a major focus of the division, with members providing outstanding contributions to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching as well as taking part in continuing education activities locally, nationally and internationally. A number of junior faculty members have recently joined the division. These appointments were made to support not only clinical and research activities, but also educational expertise. Each subspecialty area has surgeons with graduate qualifications in clinical epidemiology and educational research. These strategic appointments have been made in order to support modern, innovative and high-impact academic activities.

Global Surgery

The Department of Surgery has made the expansion of its global surgery initiative a premiere focus of the department at large. Current activities within the division include an annual mission to Ecuador by orthopedic surgeons as well as a number of ongoing projects in continental Africa. A number of pediatric surgeons within the division are actively involved strategically and operationally in the global surgery initiative.

Meet the Team

Contact Us

Division of Pediatric Surgery
2C3.65 WMC
Tel: 780-407-1847
Fax: 780-407-7005
Divisional Secretary:
Christa Buckler