Are there MIS opportunities at Queen's?

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.

Queen's University - Obstetrics and Gynecology - Kingston

Q: Do you have a formal mentorship program?

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.

Q: What mechanisms are there for feedback, and is the program responsive?

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!

Q: What is your call schedule like?

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: Fri night + Sun day (pre-call Friday afternoon) Sat day + Sun night Sat night 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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Queen’s University – Obstetrics and Gynecology – Kingston

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Contact

Dr. Marisa Horniachek

Program Director

Anna Couch

Program Administrator

Application Details

Canadian Medical Graduates

4 Available Spots

Events Calendar

Upcoming Events

There are no events at this time.

Upcoming Events From

Queen's University

Dec

19:00

EST

— Information Session, Meet & Greet, Program Director or Assistant Program Director, Program Information, Program Q&A

Queen's Anesthesiology - Meet the Program Director/Assistant Program Director

Program Highlights

Overall

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!

Clinical

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.

Educational

Fantastic simulation opportunities!
Protected academic half day (staff takes all your pagers during these 3 hours!)
Generous support for conferences (contingent on achievement of research milestones).
Multiple educational rounds (4-5 hours per week, in addition to academic half day).
Monthly Journal Clubs.

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.

Research

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).

Kingston’s Beauty!

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).

General Information

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:

PDFs of publications
PDFs of certificates/diplomas/degrees

Check out our brochure!

Salary Information

Post graduate salaries and benefits differ by province and are determined by two things: your training year, and the province you work in. See below the salaries and benefits for Queen's University - Obstetrics and Gynecology - Kingston.

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 Subject to operational requirements and at the request of a resident, a resident will not be scheduled for call duties for a period up to fourteen days prior to a CFPC or RCPSC certification exam. Subject to operational requirements and at the request of a resident, a resident will be granted up to seven consecutive days off during one of the four weeks preceding a CFPC or RCPSC certification exam.
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.

Updated October 4, 2023

Visit the PARO website.
www.myparo.ca

Kingston

History innovation thrive in our dynamic city located along the beautiful shores of Lake Ontario, an easy drive from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, in the heart of eastern Ontario. With a stable and diversified economy that includes global corporations, innovative startups and all levels of government, Kingston’s high quality-of-life offers access to world-class education and research institutions, advanced healthcare facilities, affordable living and vibrant entertainment and tourism activities.

Resident Experience

Jessica Blom

PGY-5

Queens is unique in that it offers the experience of a high level tertiary centre with a small tight knit community. We have the fortune to work one on one with staff, and the staff and residents all know each other well. We have a small but very cohesive and collegial program. The Queen’s program also offers early hands on surgical experience and operative exposure, even as a junior resident. We glean essential technical skills early on in residency. There are also no fellowships in the subspecialty programs at Queen’s, which means residents operate directly with staff, even in subspecialty ORs.

Our program is amazingly collegial and residents and staff are very friendly. Residents and staff knowing each other well means that they also know where you are at in your training and what you are capable of, allowing next steps when you are ready and not just based on what year of the program you are in. In addition to our collegial program, some aspects of the program make residency unique. For example, there is also only one resident on call at a time (after your junior ob rotation), meaning any case or delivery that comes in the door is completed by the on call resident and staff, no matter the acuity or complexity. So early hands on surgical experience comes quickly.

The community of our program is fantastic. All of the residents and staff are extremely supportive of each other both in and outside of the hospital. Given that it is a small program, all residents and staff have worked one on one together early in residency. As residents we certainly also form many friendships outside of work, and we have regular resident socials (formal and informal).

Kingston is a fantastic town for its scale, everything is within about 10 minutes! This offers an amazing quality of life there is really no comparison. Most residents live within a 5-10 minute walk or drive of both the hospital and downtown. The hospital is across the street from lake Ontario, which means its also very easy to go for a swim after work! Kingston offers a real sense of community. There is very easy access to many outdoor activities and we are very close to many nature hikes and water sports. The downtown also has a great variety of restaurants and bars to visit. Personally I enjoy playing in a volleyball league, and regularly jog, bike, paddle board and outdoor rock climb!

Decisions made about the program are made in the interests of the residents. Our department is very responsive to resident feedback. Our staff and senior residents are also very approachable, and quick to respond when a resident needs support or coverage for things like family emergencies. Truly residents and training are the focus of the program. Outside of this there are numerous resident social events, and sometimes gatherings at staff homes (or farms! – see picture attached).

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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:

Fri night + Sun day (pre-call Friday afternoon)
Sat day + Sun night
Sat night

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.

An initiative of