More recently, we supported Dr. Andrew Kintu, a graduate from Makerere University’s anesthesia residency program, for a year-long obstetric fellowship. Ugandan residents are supported by our department for a four-month training period in their senior years so that they can be exposed to a wide scope of anesthesia practice. On a yearly basis, we also support one or two McMaster anesthesia residents for a one-month elective in Uganda where they are exposed to an adapted high-training level in a low-resources environment.

The McMaster University Department of Anesthesia has partnered with the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society International Education Foundation (CASIEF), the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and the American Society of Anesthesia Global Humanitarian Outreach (GHO) to send clinical teachers to Guyana to assist them with academic and clinical teaching as well as faculty development. Dr. Joel Hamstra is the Lead for the McMaster-Guyana residency training program and, as a CASIEF board member, is the CASIEF lead for Guyana.

Our collaboration has resulted in the following:

• Assistance in curriculum development have resulted in the extension of their pre-existing 2-year diploma curriculum to 4 year residency training program
• A videoconferencing link has been established between our MUMC site and Guyana, allowing some live feed during our academic sessions. There is already a precedent for this in our Family Medicine-Anesthesia Program.
• We have residents from Guyana come to Hamilton to complete some of their clinical training rotations in their second year (much like the residents we have had from Haiti and Uganda). Thus far, three residents from Guyana have successfully completed their 4-month training at McMaster University
• McMaster Dept of Anesthesia faculty have acted as external examiners for the last three years (Drs. Alez Dauphin, Hamstra and Reddy)
• The Department of Anesthesia is currently recruiting Anesthesia faculty from McMaster to go Guyana to provide both clinical and academic teaching

For more information on how you can help, please contact Dr. Joel Hamstra at jmhamstra@gmail.com

The program draws expert instructors from the Department of Anesthesia and, more recently, from the Departments of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, and covers the broad spectrum of PBL at McMaster University, professional competencies, and evidence-based medicine.

The educational program was initiated as a collaboration between the Department of Anesthesia and the Office of International Affairs at McMaster University. Seminars on problem-based learning and other approaches to medical education at McMaster University, as well as evidence-based medicine and simulation-based learning, are covered. It is a unique and fascinating opportunity to share and exchange ideas of medical education practices in Canada and China.