Perioperative Medicine Fellowship (12 months)

Our department was the first in New Zealand to establish a perioperative medicine fellowship.(1)

The fellow will participate in regular Preoperative Anaesthetic Clinics. Apart from general service requirements, exposure will be given to complex endocrine surgery, major orthopaedic surgery, invasive urological procedures including nephrectomies, pacemaker insertions, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). The fellow will work closely with the perioperative clinical lead and nurse specialists. The fellow is expected to attend, and then instruct on our gastric POCUS course held twice a year.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the fellowship, the fellow will be able to:

• Demonstrate evidence-based clinical practice in perioperative medicine
• Assess patients with a wide range of medical conditions undergoing surgical procedures of varying levels of risk, including rational use of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET)
• Institute appropriate preoperative management plans for patient optimisation
• Manage complex patients post-operatively, working in consult with the primary team
• Perform point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) procedures, specifically gastric, airway, and neuraxial ultrasound

• Maintenance of a perioperative medicine logbook to document follow-up of ASA III and above patients (or those with complex perioperative issues) seen by the fellow in Preoperative Anaesthetic Clinics or similar patients allocated on theatre lists
• Attendance at the ortho-geriatric ward round once a fortnight