Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain
This fellowship is designed to provide the advanced learner with the opportunities to gain expertise in academic and clinical regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine.
Training occurs primarily at South Health Campus, but may include rotations at other sites, both inside and outside of the Calgary region. Our goal is to optimize the learning experience of our fellows and create an environment that fosters development of both clinical and academic skills. We perform approximately 3500 to 3600 cases per year involving neuraxial and peripheral regional anesthetic techniques including ultrasound-guided single shot and continuous peripheral nerve blocks. We also have a busy Acute Pain service which manages complex pain patients as well as those patients receiving regional anesthesia single shot blocks and catheters.
Teaching takes place primarily in the regional anesthesia block area, where fellows will work one-on-one with faculty fellowship-trained and experienced anesthesiologists in regional anesthesia. The regional anesthesia block area relies on teamwork and fellows will also work closely with experienced nursing staff and anesthesia assistants. Fellows will also round on patients on the acute pain service with acute pain staff anesthesiologists as well as acute pain nurse practitioners.
Unique to our program is an elective rotation where different regional anesthesia, pain management, and/or point of care ultrasound experiences can be explored in other clinical settings. Some examples of these include pediatric regional anesthesia and acute pain, global health regional anesthesia, simulation in regional anesthesia, transitional pain, point of care ultrasound or regional anesthesia and acute pain at other centers.
The fellowship is one year and one fellowship position is offered per year with a start date in typically in July. Alternative start dates may be available.
Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Fellowship Program Manual
Perioperative Medicine Fellowship Contacts
Dr. Vivian Ip, MBChB, MRCP, FRCA
Dr. Vivian Ip is a Clinical Professor at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is a practicing anesthesiologist with fellowship training in Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, and Ambulatory anesthesia. At the South Health Campus Hospital in Calgary, she is the Director of Regional Anesthesia Division, and the Director of the Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Medicine Fellowship Program.
At the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS), she is the Secretary on the Board of Directors, the Immediate Past Chair of the Regional Anesthesia Section and the Immediate Past Chair of the Environmental Sustainability Section. At the American Society of Regional Anesthesia (ASRA) Pain Medicine, she is the Chair of the Newsletter Committee/Editor-in-chief of the newsletter, and the Advisor of the Green Anesthesia Special Interest Group. Along with these roles, she also serves as an Editor for the journal, Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (RAPM), and she is the guest handling editor for the sustainability portfolio, and the Editorial Board member at the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia (CJA). In addition, she is active in research and continues to publish at peer-reviewed journals, her research interests include regional nerve block catheters, environmental sustainability in the perioperative arena, neuromodulation in acute pain, and nerve block safety.