On behalf of Dr. Johnny Lau, Divisional Clinical Fellowship Director, Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Toronto

COVID has made a significant impact on all of our personal and professional lives. The format of the Fellowship Research moved to a virtual platform. We had 40 abstracts submitted by our fellows, and we accepted 13 abstracts for podium presentation. The submitted abstracts represented all the hospitals and various subspecialties and were worthy for presentation at any national or international meeting.

We had a record number of 90 participants via Zoom. The virtual platform was very successful in the running our Fellowship research from 3-6pm, but it allowed for a broader support of our graduating fellows by senior faculty and alumni from afar. The virtual Fellowship meeting is an opportunity for our senior faculty and alumni to participate in our future meetings to support our graduating fellows and reconnect with the current University of Toronto faculty.

I would like to thank the members of our selection panel (Drs. Ogilvie-Harris, Kramer, Kuzyk, and Wadey) for making some very difficult choices.

The Best Podium presentation was awarded to Dr. Eric Crawford for “In Adult Patients with a Complete Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), are Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) Targets and Vasopressor Treatment Associated with the Development of Sacral Ulcers (SU)?”  

The Best Education presentation was awarded to Dr. Tan Chen for “Utility and Role of Virtual Reality-based Simulation Models in Spinal Decompression Training.”

The Best e-posters were awarded to Dr. Elain Trottier for “Eliminating all routine post-operative radiographs for surgically-managed paediatric supracondylar fractures” and Dr. Anna Rienmuller for “The usefulness of the timed-up-and-Go-test (TUG) as an objective measure of walking impairment in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis.”

The Best Fellowship teacher as selected by the residents was Dr. David Drynan.

The Best Fellowship supervisors based on teaching effective scores as reported by the graduating fellows were:  Drs P. Ferguson, S. Kelley, P. Kuzyk, W. Kraemer, and U. Narayanan.

The keynote presentation was presented by Dr. Darrell Ogilvie-Harris, and was entitled “Defying the Ravages of Age: Sports Medicine and the Masters.” Dr. Ogilvie-Harris presented his passion for sports medicine and explored the secrets of the fountain of youth in Orthopaedics.  His advice to the graduating fellows was to enjoy your family.

The recording of our Fellowship Research Day is available in your Divisional account area under ZOOM recordings.

Dr. Johnny Lau, MD, MSc, FRCSC
Orthopaedic Surgeon, Foot and Ankle
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Program Director, University of Toronto Foot and Ankle Fellowship
Divisional Clinical Fellowship Director, Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Toronto