Number of Positions: 1
Duration: 1 year
Location: Vancouver General Hospital
Fellowship Directors: Dr. Richard Cook
Senior Administrative Assistant: Maryam Milani
About
UBC Division of Cardiac Surgery offers an Advanced Cardiac Surgery clinical fellowship training for interested Canadian and international applicants who have successfully completed a cardiac surgical residency training recognized by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Fellowship training is one year at Vancouver General Hospital. The fellow will work and train with the entire cardiac surgery team in that hospital. Although it is preferred that candidates bring their own funding through sponsorship or have the ability to obtain a BC medical licence, funding might be provided by the Division of Cardiac Surgery.
The fellowship will take place at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), which is a quaternary care hospital in Vancouver, BC. VGH performs ~ 700 open heart procedures annually, including: coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG); aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valve surgery, including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR); major aortic surgery, including thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR); robotically-assisted cardiac surgery; and mini-thoracotomy valve repair/replacement and atrial septal defect (ASD) repair.
Objectives of Training
The objectives of the fellowship are to provide the fellow with the opportunity to be involved in all types of adult cardiac surgical procedures occurring at VGH. The skills that may be acquired include:
- CABG techniques, including harvesting of conduits
- Aortic valve replacement
- Use of the robot to harvest the internal mammary arteries
- Right and left mini-thoracotomy access to the cardiac structures
- Mitral valve repair techniques, including: neochordae, resection, sliding plasty, ring annuloplasty, commissural closure, cleft closure
- Tricuspid valve repair techniques including ring annuloplasty, neochordae, patch enlargement of leaflets, cleft closure
- Off-pump minimally-invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB)
- Off-pump CABG
- Left atrial appendage ligation
- Aortic valve repair techniques
- Aortic root enlargement techniques
- Aortic root replacement and aortic valve-sparing root replacement surgery
- Aortic arch surgery
- Descending aortic and thoracoabdominal aortic surgery
- Thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR)
- Management of acute type A and type B dissections
- Surgery for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
- Pacemaker placement and management
- V-A ECMO
- TAVI
Responsibilities
The fellows will be responsible for
- Pre-operative assessment of patients, including in-hospital consults
- Preparation of patients for surgery, including obtaining consent and writing orders
- Post-operative management of patients
- Intra-operative responsibilities will be assigned according to the ability of the fellow and will be expected to increase with experience and time
- To take call (from home) on a 1 in 3 basis with either Dr. Cook, Dr. Kim or Dr. Price
- Attendance at clinical and teaching rounds
- Weekly mitral and tricuspid valve clinic rounds (Friday AM)
- Weekly cardiac surgery triage rounds (Wednesday AM)
- Weekly combined cardiac surgery/cardiology clinical and academic rounds (Thursday AM)
- Monthly TEVAR rounds (Tuesday AM)
- Intra-operative teaching of learners, including medical students and residents
- Participation in clinical and teaching rounds
- Didactic teaching of cardiac surgical residents
- Performing clinical research
Research
The fellow will be expected to lead and complete at least one, and preferably 2 clinical research projects for the year that he/she is in the program. The proposal for the research projects will be expected within the first month of the fellowship to allow enough time to complete the project. Activities related to research projects may include preparation of a study protocol, including study design; submission of ethics applications, submission of grant applications, collection and interpretation of data, preparation and submission of abstracts and manuscripts, presentation of study results at local and international meetings.
Application Process
The fellowship position for 2026 has been filled and we are no longer accepting applications at this time. We will provide an update once the timeline is known for submitting 2027 applications.
Application Requirements
Interested applications should submit the following documents:
- CV and a cover letter (with indication of the desired start date and length of fellowship)
- Copy of specialty residency degree translated into English and notarized
- 3 work-related reference letters
- Letter of Funding if applicable (Please note that self funding is not acceptable)
- Meet the English Language Proficiency requirements set by CPSBC
Submit applications to Maryam Milani, Senior Administrative Assistant, UBC Cardiac Surgery