Updates to the VGH/UBC Spine Program

Our program is currently undergoing significant and exciting change and growth. Dr. Dvorak is unlikely to return to clinical practice and Dr. Fisher is transitioning to retirement over the coming year. Giant shoes to fill for both of them. We have hired one surgeon already with three additional surgeons joining the group over the coming year.

Dr. Charlotte Dandurand is a UBC neurosurgery residency and VGH Spine fellowship graduate. Dr. Dvorak has mentored her in the AO Knowledge Forum Trauma while she is focusing her clinical practice on minimally invasive surgery, endoscopy, and robotics.

Later this year we will welcome Dr. Brad Jacobs, a mid-career deformity surgeon from Calgary and a leading AO Educator.

We have also hired two new graduates: Dr. William Chu Kwan (a Toronto Ortho graduate and prior fellow of ours who will also complete an MIS / endoscopy fellowship with Dr. Mike Wang in Miami) and Dr. Newton Cho (a surgeon scientist that will be joining Dr. Kwon at ICORD). We now have dedicated deformity, oncology, MIS and neurosurgical / intradural teams, as well as two different navigation systems, use three different instrument vendors, and have just acquired the Mazor Robot and an Endoscopy suite. We believe these updates have hugely enriched what we thought was already an excellent fellowship program, and we hope this would encourage you to refer potential fellows.

Updates to the Spine Fellowship

In the past, ward and emergency department responsibilities were identified as unreasonable burdens on fellows. We have taken great steps to reduce this non-surgical workload for fellows. The ward work is now the responsibility of intensivists, physiatrists, a nurse practitioner and three associate physicians, so our fellows are now essentially free of that burden. We have also established an Advanced Practice Physiotherapy program, triaging the majority of the spine referrals to the clinic.

We are now operating in large state of the art OR suites, vastly different from those days in OR21 and OR9! The entire program has been significantly transformed – and we believe this makes for one of the best fellowships in the world.

Finally, Canada is about to approve a first-in-the-world diploma program in spine surgery through the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. This will be an official diploma program that can follow either orthopedic or neurosurgical residency training. The VGH/UBC fellowship will be the first program to offer this diploma as part of our fellowship, beginning in 2026-27.

So any fellows that are interested, please reach out. Additional fellowship information can be found at https://orthopaedics.med.ubc.ca/education/fellowshipopportunities/neurosurgical-orthopaedic-spine/

John Street