An initiative of
Dr. Marisa Horniachek
Program Director
Julie Wimmer
We are a program of close-knit, open-minded residents and faculty, providing a warm and enjoyable interpersonal and professional experience.
Very accessible faculty, most of whom have offices on the same floor close to each other – great for networking!
Excellent mentoring and career counselling: early recognition and support of residents in difficulty; individual attention in all rotations; close, personal relationship between residents and staff. Attending staff are very supportive and committed to resident learning and success.
Excellent faculty-to-trainee ratio (15 residents, 17 staff) and lack of clinical fellows in MFM, Urogyne, Gyne Onc provides immense opportunity for hands-on learning.
Strong experience with, and leadership in, Competency-based Medical Education (CBME): this will be our 8th year which means all our residents will be CBME residents. Queen’s OBGYN faculty were leaders in CBD development at the Royal College.
Cohesive, functional, responsive program with an excellent reputation & track record!
90% of activities are located at a single site (Kingston General Hospital), with some outpatient OR and some specialty clinics occurring at Hotel Dieu Hospital and Lennox & Addington County General Hospital (in Napanee – 40 mins from downtown Kingston).
Labour & Delivery, NICU, post-op ward and outpatient clinics are all located on a single floor, making it very efficient to circulate around.
Unique transgender clinic; multi-disciplinary Women’s Bleeding Disorder clinic.
Early surgical exposure. Early autonomous experience as on-call resident as there is one resident on-call at night in hospital (with back up second on-call): you get to be in the thick of it early, right away in your first year! But don’t worry, staff is only a door away and very supportive and responsive.
Calls: mole system Monday-Fridays: nights only, no days. On weekends, no consecutive 24h call!
Strong subspecialty exposure; strong MIS program; robotic surgery available in gynecology oncology.
Strong examination preparation: yearly formative OSCE and yearly formal OSCE run as close as possible to Royal College format; participation in CREOG and the National Canadian Examination (formally called APOG) preparatory examinations; once R5, weekly oral exams, plus Departmental support for R5 to attend the Canadian OBGYN Review Program review course.
Strong support for independent research project: in house statistician/methodologist; many faculty with MSc in Clinical
Epidemiology. We have some phenomenal CIHR-funding researchers at Queen’s in MFM, REI, and MIS, including Women’s Health Clinical Mentorship Grant for projects pairing our residents to superb mentors.
All residents attend the Queen’s University Research Course, supported by the Department.
Expectation to complete at least one research project, either with collection of original data, or a quality assurance project. Both can receive generous support to attend national meetings for dissemination.
Opportunity to complete a Master Degree of one’s choice through the Clinical Investigator Program (CIP).
Family-friendly city with a great waterfront and bustling tourism; great water sports and cycling. Plenty of restaurants, cafés, and bars, serving excellent and diverse food and drink.
Well-established sports, music, and arts scene, including festivals, shows, and concerts (check out Leon’s Centre Stadium, the Tett Centre and the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, among other great venues).
Access to places of prayer of many creeds: mosque, synagogue, most Christian denominations (Catholic, Protestants, Orthodox etc). Furthermore, Queen’s University has an active indigenous community found in the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre as well as an Office of Indigenous Initiatives.
Short commuting times (most walk or cycle to work and school); lower cost of living; within easy reach of Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.
Close proximity to numerous beautiful leisure destinations (Prince Edward County/Sandbanks Provincial Park – and their wines and beaches! Thousand Islands, Rideau Canal – a designated UNESCO world heritage centre!)
Enjoy the great outdoors! Hiking (Rock Dunder), sailing and stand-up paddling (Lake Ontario), canoeing and kayaking, and camping in Provincial Parks (Frontenac Provincial Park, Bon Echo Provincial Park, Charleston Lake Provincial Park among others).
When asking a referee for a reference letter, ask them to support candidate characteristics with concrete examples demonstrating each quality. Qualities we are interested in hearing about are communication, compassion, technical and surgical skills, and clinical reasoning and judgement.
For personal letters, we are interested in your motivation in the field, our site, and your personal characteristics indicating suitability to this field with concrete examples from your experience. Consider including an explanation or narrative of specific strengths you have that would be an asset in OBGYN with concrete examples. If you decide to self-identify as from a group that is under-represented in medicine, please include an extra paragraph on your connectiveness with that community. If you have identified as having low socio-economic background, you have the option of describing how these circumstances influenced your path. Word limit for self-ID paragraph is 300 words (in addition to your 500-750 word letter).
Items we neither require nor want:
Check out our brochure!
Ontario | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Effective October 4th, 2023 | |||
PGY1 | $67,044.99 | ||
PGY2 | $72,804.48 | ||
PGY3 | $78,190.61 | ||
PGY4 | $84,712.26 | ||
PGY5 | $90,073.03 | ||
PGY6 | $95,190.86 | ||
PGY7 | $99,836.15 | ||
PGY8 | $105,844.41 | ||
PGY9 | $109,734.47 | ||
Professional Leave | 7 working days/year Additional time off provided for writing any CND or US certification exam, leave includes the exam date and reasonable travel time to and from the exam site. Additional RCPSC & CFPC Certification Examination Prep Time
|
Annual Vacation | 4 weeks |
Meal Allowance | No |
Frequency of Calls | 1 in 4 In-hospital, 1 in 3 home |
Pregnancy Leave | 17 weeks |
Parental Leave | 35 weeks, 37 weeks if resident did not take pregnancy leave |
Supplemental Unemployment Benefit (SUB) Plan | Top-up to 84% 27 weeks for women who take pregnancy and parental leave; 12 weeks for parents on stand-alone parental leave. |
Provincial Health Insurance | Yes |
Extended Health Insurance | Yes |
Provincial Dues (% of salary) | 1.3% |
Dental Plan | 85% paid for eligible expenses |
CMPA Dues Paid | Under current arrangements, residents are rebated by Ministry of Health and Long Term Care for dues in excess of $300. |
Long-Term Disability Insurance | Yes – 70% of salary, non-taxable. |
Statutory and Floating Holidays | 2 weeks leave with full pay and benefits; 10 stat days plus 1 personal floater. Residents are entitled to at least 5 consecutive days off over the Christmas or New Year period, which accounts for 3 statutory holidays (Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day), and 2 weekend days. |
Life Insurance | Yes, 2x salary |
Salary and Benefit Continuance | A resident that can’t work due to illness or injury will have salary and benefits maintained for 6 months or until end of appointment (whichever occurs first) |
Call Stipend | Regular: $127.60 in-hospital; $63.80 home call or qualifying shift on shift-based services. Weekend premium: $140.36 in-hospital; $70.18 home call or qualifying shift on shift-based services. |
Visit the PARO website.
www.myparo.ca
No, but we find mentors very easily at Queen’s given the small number of staff and residents who work very closely together over five years. Often your research supervisor that you pair with in first year becomes a mentor, as do the staff in the areas of OB/GYN that you find yourself particularly interested in (whether subspecialty or generalists who simply have areas of common clinical interest). Also, there is a close mentor relationship that develops between the Junior OB resident (4 blocks in first year) and the Senior OB resident, as you work 12-hour days together 5 days a week for 4 months! Your Senior OB teaches you everything from your first C-section to just knowing the ropes as a resident. Finally, we are developing an informal mentorship program which pairs interested PGY-1s with a senior resident to provide additional support if needed.
MIS opportunities abound! By the end of Junior GYN you will have had several opportunities to perform a TLHBSO as primary surgeon with staff assist. We also get lots of hysteroscopy on Junior GYN and in Brockville. On GYN Oncology you will have the opportunity to assist robotic surgery as well.
We have a biannual resident retreat with the Residency Program Committee where we discuss any difficulties residents are experiencing and how they can be overcome. The program is very responsive and at the next retreat we review the ‘leftovers’ from the previous retreat to make sure they were addressed. Throughout the year feedback can also be channeled through the Residency Program Committee (3 resident reps – 2 voting) or can be brought to the Program Director, who is always available to chat!
We do a night float system that we call ‘mole week’ — Mon to Thurs inclusive from 5pm-7:15am. On weekends we split our shifts so everyone gets a bit of a weekend:
The residents really love this arrangement! We don’t do graduated call per se (i.e. decreasing the amount of call as you get more senior) but the senior residents do more second call, which is home call with GYN Oncology rounding on weekends, so they spend less time in hospital than primary call.
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