Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine Fellowships

The Royal Perth Bentley Group Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine provides anaesthetic services for a broad range of surgical and medical services.

The Department offers seven different anaesthesia provisional fellowship training streams; airway, malignant hyperthermia, regional, simulation, research, education, trauma and pain. Fellowship positions usually start in February.

Fellows commit to a mix of general and fellowship activities. Fellows are well supported through adequate consultant supervision, fortnightly protected teaching, weekly departmental academic meetings, regular morbidity and mortality meetings and a well-subscribed departmental social calendar.

For general information about the fellowships, including applications and allocations, please email RPBG.APM-SRJobs@health.wa.gov.au.

Airway Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Scott Douglas

Royal Perth Hospital’s (RPH) world renowned airway fellowship attracts applicants from many countries as well as from Australia.

The airway fellowship is a six-month fellowship completed at RPH by post fellowship trainees. It is highly sought after by trainees and consultants alike. The two fellows alternate weekly in their airway allocations. The fellowship consists of a variety of roles; teaching in the wet lab, organising Can't Intubate Can’t Oxygenate (CICO) courses, teaching in the dry lab, being allocated to airway lists, managing the allocations for the above, completing audits, assisting in research and attending conferences.

 
Education Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Ryan Juniper

The RPH Anaesthesia department is made of a large number of specialist anaesthetists and anaesthetists-in-training, as well as visiting medical students, junior doctors, and paramedics.

The role of the education fellow is the coordination and promotion of the many education activities that occur within the department, as well as the promotion of outside education opportunities available to those within the department.

Fellows service a normal clinical roster, but will be provided with protected non-clinical time to perform their duties as Education Fellow.

 
General Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Gordon Chapman 

The general fellow services a clinical roster with exposure to a wide variety of surgical and procedural lists, as well as duties outside the theatre complex.

Human Factors in Healthcare Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Thy Do

Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) is the first Australian Hospital to deliver formal, standardised, foundational Human Factors (HF) training to their staff. These positions will assist in shaping the future directions of this centre of excellence and help integrate HF into organisational processes. Quarantined time for clinical support activities will complement clinical experience. Fellows will supervise and provide clinical teaching to more junior trainees, and foundational HF teaching to other healthcare staff in the hospital, both in- and out-of-hours.

This role will interface with the Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine, the Director of Operations for the Nexus Foundational Human Factors Training Program and other members of the Hospital Executive Team (Director of Clinical Services and Safety & Quality Division Leads) to assist Royal Perth Bentley Group in achieving its vision of becoming Australia’s safest healthcare group. 30 hours per week in anaesthesia duties, standard anaesthesia on-call requirements, 10 hours per week in Human Factors related projects.

HF Fellows will identify their own area(s) of interest in any combination of research, audit, teaching, and administration. In collaboration with the fellowship supervisor and the relevant leads for their area(s) of interest, they will develop an individualised plan for the use of their CST, with supervision and support provided to ensure these goals are met.

The current job opportunity can be found on the following websites: 

• Medical Jobs WA - Mercury eRecruit (external link)
• Senior Registrar - Anaesthetics - Human Factors (external link)

 
Malignant Hyperthermia Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Phil Nelson

Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is a hereditary disorder where a life-threatening hypermetabolic reaction can occur in response to particular inhalational anaesthetic agents or depolarising muscle relaxants (suxamethonium). The MH Investigation Unit is based at RPH and serves the whole of Western Australia.

The patients are seen in the MH clinic which occurs fortnightly in the Department of Anaesthesia. A decision is made regarding further investigations, which may include blood testing (looking for a DNA mutation) and/or muscle biopsy for in-vitro contracture testing (IVCT).

Muscle biopsies occur in theatre once fortnightly. The biopsy is taken while the patient is under general anaesthesia, which is usually administered by the MH Fellow. The IVCT is usually completed within 90 minutes, the results are then reviewed by the MH Fellow in the lab.

 
Pain Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Leah Power

RPH manages a vast spectrum of acute and chronic pain over our inpatient and outpatient services. In addition to consultations, interventional pain procedures, multidisciplinary assessment, treatment and pain programs are offered by our service. Advanced training towards Fellowship of FPMANZCA is offered in Perth through the Statewide Tertiary Pain Service. This involves rotation during the first of two years of training through Fiona Stanley Hospital, RPH and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

Three 12-month positions for first year Fellows in Pain Medicine are advertised on the WA Jobs Board (external link) around May each year.

 
Regional Fellowship

Supervisor: Prof. Krishna Boddu

Two positions are offered each year at RPH. The duration of the fellowship is six months, due to high demand and where possible we offer a one-year program. Regional anaesthesia fellows will be placed on the general emergency on-call roster.

We encourage all our fellows to undertake supervised research projects, write book chapters, and other scientific educational material. As well as attending and presenting at city, state, national and international meetings. They are encouraged to teach our trainee registrars. In this fellowship program, fellows gain consultant attributes as well as learning peripheral nerve blocks and management of post anaesthesia pain for the upper and lower extremities and also the thoracic-abdominal trunk.

 
Research Fellowship

Supervisor: Prof. Tomas Corcoran

The research team at RPH Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine consists of two part-time Research Fellow positions and Research Coordinators. There are usually 12-20 clinical or pre-clinical trials in progress, including international and national multi-centre trials, investigator-initiated trials, local trials and on occasion, commercial pharmaceutical trials.

The Research Fellows have approximately 50% of their time allocated to academic duties (teaching and research) and 50% to clinical service. Supervision of academic work is performed by Professors Corcoran and Ledowski. The Department takes pride in maintaining the highest standards in research governance and ethical behaviour. The candidates are expected to be familiar with the principal tenets of Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and are actively encouraged to complete online GCP training.

 
Simulation Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Ian Fleming

The simulation fellow is an advanced training position, aimed at developing skills in presenting, teaching and debriefing others. The role is a two day-a-week commitment where training is delivered to participants within the department, and hospital-wide.

Emphasis is on ensuring safety of patient care by developing leadership, teamwork and communication skills through crisis resource management scenario training. This includes regular hospital Medical Emergency Team (MET) simulation training and theatre MET training, in addition to broader contributions to scenario training with the State Major Trauma Unit, Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department teams.

Delivery of this multidisciplinary teaching is administered in the hospital’s dedicated simulation centre in the WASON building. Additional roles and responsibilities of the simulation fellow include weekly tutorials with the department’s Resident Medical Officers.

The candidate for this fellowship is appointed from amongst the cohort of provisional fellows already employed within our department. If multiple suitable trainees are shortlisted this will be through a competitive interview process.

 
Trauma Fellowship

Supervisor: Dr Christine Grobler

RPH contains the State Major Trauma Centre for Western Australia. Our trauma fellowship has a strong emphasis on trauma, but will offer experience in most fields of anaesthesia as well.

Fellows will work on average 40 hours a week – 30 of these hours will be clinical time and one 10-hour shift will be protected educational time (in the State Major Trauma Unit and on the road accompanying a clinical support paramedic with St John Ambulance).

The clinical time is comprised of night shifts/weekend shifts/afternoon shifts/after-hours and days-on-duty.

The Fellow will often times be the most senior anaesthetist on the premises after hours and will be expected to effectively manage the facilitation of patients to theatre, assist junior colleagues and attend to various calls for assistance from other disciplines. The department is very supportive and there is always a Consultant on-call, whom the Fellow is encouraged to phone at any hour for advice or to request them to come into hospital to assist with an anticipated difficult case.

The candidate for this fellowship is appointed from amongst the cohort of provisional fellows already employed within our department. If multiple suitable trainees are shortlisted this will be through a competitive interview process.