Division of Rheumatology

Teaching Hospitals

St. Joseph’s Healthcare

The bulk of the educational experience will be at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The inpatient unit at this hospital is a four bed RDU. This is considered an “acute” RDU. Most patients in this facility have serious and active rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, vasculitis, or spondyloarthropathies, and are frequently followed in association with the regional services in nephrology and respirology. There is a special arrangement with the CCU for administering IV prostaglandin infusions for those patients with severe ischemia. When Rheumatology residents will be posted here early in their training, they will be responsible for direct care of some of the (more complicated) patients in this unit, although the Rheumatology resident’s duty will eventually become more supervisory. There will be a moderately heavy consultation load at this hospital, most of which will be done by the Rheumatology trainee if one is on service.

There are extensive outpatient clinics with this hospital. There are general Rheumatology clinics run by Drs. Khalidi, Scocchia, Kaminska, Bobba, Hart, Bianchi, and Boulos. Dr. Khalidi also runs a vasculitis clinic weekly. Dr. Kaminska has a practice that focuses on connective tissue diseases such as SLE, scleroderma and Raynaud’s. Dr. Adachi runs a practice in metabolic bone disease and residents are required to attend some of his clinics. All of these clinics will have followup appointments for inpatients and consultations that are being followed and that will provide the residents with some continuity of care. Also a Continuity clinic will be set up for the resident for their 2 years that will be supervised by an attending at St. Joseph’s hospital to allow for the resident to see new consults and follow-ups over a 2 year period of their training.

McMaster Division of the Hamilton Health Sciences

Residents will spend time with Dr. Matsos who runs a SLE clinic and Dr. Carmona who sees a wide variety of Rheumatology patients There will also be training in the combined Rheumatology/Immunology clinic run by joint faculty of Rheumaotogy and Immunology with complicated multisystem Rheumatologic diseases.

A Neuromuscular clinic, run primarily by the Rehabilitation and Neurology services is present run by Dr. Tarnopolsky. This group has major peer reviewed funding and is supported by a very large basic science research program in muscle diseases in the Departments of Biology and Medicine at McMaster University.

Hamilton General and Henderson Divisions of the Hamilton Health Sciences

Residents will rotate through these institutions, and will work with Dr. Cividino as part of an integrated program. Dr. Cividino’s office is located directly across the street from St. Joseph’s Hospital and conducts collaborative research with the rheumatologist’s located there. He has a small number of inpatients admitted at any given time but these patients serve as a basis for an excellent educational experience.

Residents working here will spend a lot of their time based with Dr. Cividino, who runs an extremely busy Rheumatology outpatient practice particularly interested in ongoing treatment and study of connective tissue diseases and osteoporosis.

Dr. Cividino runs a weekly clinic at the Hamilton General Hospital located in the part of town where this hospital is. As part of an integrated experience, rotations with Dr. Cividino will be a part of the St. Joseph’s hospital experience.