Along with our international education and training programs, we have recently developed a curriculum for students wanting to get involved in global surgical work and research. This thesis based program is offered at McGill University and allows Canadian and international students from both medical and non-medical backgrounds to engage in our international projects and advance our capacity building programs. For more information visit the program's page by clicking here.

The Jean-Martin Laberge Fellowship in Global Pediatric Surgery is a unique new training program for surgeons and surgical trainees from both high- and limited-resource settings interested in global pediatric surgery. It is offered in conjunction with the Centre for Global Surgery at McGill University within McGill Global Health.

Location

Activities take place at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and other sites within the McGill University Health Centre, on the McGill University campus, and at global sites depending on the individual projects and existing partnerships.

Focus & activities

The fellowship is primarily research-focused and lasts 1-2 years. It can lead to either a Master’s or a PhD degree in Experimental Surgery. Pursuing an academic degree is recommended but not mandatory.

Fellows can select their main research topics from a wide range of available global surgical research areas, including burden of disease, access to surgical, human and material resources for surgery, global surgical training, health care policy, and others. Besides their main project, the fellows will be active participants in the divisional research team, pursuing and supervising a variety of other clinical and public health surgical research projects.

Fellows have access to a broad range of research support services through McGill University, including epidemiological, statistical, and medical librarian support. Travel to low-resource settings is optional but encouraged. The JML Global Research Laboratory benefits from several international academic partnerships and is a founding site for the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS).

Supervised clinical activity within the division of pediatric surgery is possible, depending on individual licensing requirements.

Funding

Funding in the form of a modest salary and tuition support is available, and the fellow will be encouraged and guided in seeking various research grants and awards.

Application process

Prospective fellows are encouraged to contact the director by email and discuss their interest and intent. Following this, a formal application form is requested together with a personal CV and 2 reference letters.

The deadline for applications is June 30 for the academic year starting in the following year.

While research is instrumental in defining the extent of the burden, such work needs to be supported by education to address the burden of surgical disease and injury in resource limited settings. The education component of the CGS program revolves around trauma training and capacity building. At the request of institutions worldwide, the team provides certified training in trauma management and teamwork development through courses such as Trauma Team Training™, the Advanced Trauma Life Support™, the Basic Life support™, the Rural Trauma Team Development Course ™ and the Trauma and Team Disaster Response™ Course. By identifying local leadership to implement and manage the courses we have ensured continuous knowledge dissemination in resource-limited settings through a train the trainer process. For example, with the CGS support, Tanzania has been offering the TTT™ for the last 10 years, which has helped improve the skills of many providers. We are also actively involved in organizing and offering training in Ukraine in partnership with the World Health Organization and in Nepal at the request of the Canadian Red Cross.

For more details visit: TDTR