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Department of Surgery — Division of General Surgery Web Page
There are four Surgical Residency Programs at McMaster:
- General Surgery
- Orthopedics
- Plastic Surgery
- Vascular Surgery
General Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery and Plastic Surgery all require a minimum of five years of surgical training. Residents must be eligible for the General Surgery Fellowship before commencing Vascular training. The candidates in each program will have to be successful in the Principles of Surgery examination (taken after completion of two core years) before they are eligible to apply to take the Fellowship examination in the specialty concerned.
General Surgery
The General Surgery Program consists of two years of a Core Program, and three years of definitive General Surgical training and education.
Core Program
It is in the Core Program that the suitability of a resident for a surgical career is assessed, and at the same time the biological principles necessary for the management of surgical patients and diagnosis of surgical problems are emphasized. Concurrent with a clinical experience which includes six months of general surgery in each of two consecutive years, there are rotations on Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and other non-general surgical activity in the first year. In the second year, subspecialty activity is commenced, and by the end of that second year the candidates should be eligible for the Principles of Surgery examination.
There is a Core Educational Program with a dedicated educational half day, and a syllabus and curriculum is made available to the residents when they start the program. There are periodic service-based evaluations, six monthly oral examinations, and an annual written examination to assess progress.
Post-Core Program
The three years of definitive general surgery are most closely exemplified by the final year (Chief Residency) in which the level of responsibility and the gravity of the surgical opportunities is clearly used to test the resident's ability to practise as a consulting surgeon.
In the two years leading up to the Chiefship, selected sub-specialties are emphasized including the following:
- A mandatory rotation in Pediatric surgery
- A three month experience in surgical ICU (this services the Regional Trauma Program)
Other rotations include a period on the Head & Neck Service, optional periods in Vascular surgery and Urology, and a rotation in Gastroenterology (with a mixed medical and endoscopic experience which will be used by the emerging General Surgeon).
Research
All candidates are encouraged to be interested in the subject of research, and with the resident's satisfactory performance already on record, an attempt will be made to provide a period of time for an intense researched-related activity. We do not have a full research year.
Education
All candidates will be expected to participate in education of their junior colleagues, and to share in educational responsibilities in relationship to medical students on the services on which they are working.
On-Call Duties
Concurrent responsibility for the patients being cared for makes each of the training and learning experiences a serious exercise. We try to limit the on-call duty to one night in three for incoming emergencies and cross-coverage, and encourage the residents to make advance plans for personal recreation (holidays, selected family events etc) so that appropriate time off call can be arranged with everybody else's convenience in mind.
Final ITER
No resident is allowed to take the final fellowship over the signature of our program, unless the consensus of the supervising staff and the Clinical Teaching Unit Directors suggests that this person is satisfactorily trained and expected to be able to perform as an effective surgical consultant. The FRCS examination is not used as a final filter, to make for us decisions we would not be prepared to make for ourselves.