Your COA / Votre association
13
(continued from page 12)
Our first week was in Paris. Alex spent her time doing spine surgery. Alex’s first day was spent at St-Joseph Hospital with Dr. Wolf, scrubbing in for a scoliosis surgery. The rest of the week was spent at the Bicetre Hospital, with Professor Charles Court. She then had the opportunity to scrub in for several surgeries (ALIF, MIS lumbar fusions), and participated in daily ward rounds, and daily conferences where all of the elective operative cases of the upcoming weeks were presented and a surgical plan was made with input from all of the surgeons in the division. I spent my time split between Hôpital Ambrose-Paré in Paris with Professor Philippe Hardy and L’Hôpital André Mignot in Versailles with Professor Philippe Beaufils. These two stops were very interesting for me from a sports medicine perspective. I was a little surprised with the similarities in how we all approach ACL reconstruction, not just in France but in all three countries. Much more entertaining was debating about shoulder instability while in France “the home of the Latarjet”. I was very impressed with the speed in which they could do their Latarjets. Versailles is considered the “City of Kings” and it is of great offense is to call someone from Versailles a “Parisian” as residents of Versailles are of much higher noble blood. When not talking meniscal repair and transplant with the group, I had a great opportunity to do some running on the Palace grounds. From Paris we then joined back up and travelled north to Brussels. In Brussels we were graciously met by Professor Cornu from the University Clinics of St Luc. When Professor Cornu finishes his orthopaedic career, he certainly could go into the tourism/sight seeing business with his great hospitality!
We had a number of academic sessions here and also had a tour of their tissue bank. Working in Halifax I am spoiled with the quality and access of our regional tissue bank. I was very surprised to learn that few of the Western European countries have their own tissue banks. Belgium, in fact, supplies tissue to many of the countries and is part of the business model for a number of the larger hospitals. Not unlike Canada, Belgium is starting to run into a workforce over supply issue. This is happening at a much earlier stage for medical students trying to enter residency programs due to very high intake numbers of medical students (financial benefit for the universities) despite the governments clamping down and reducing the number of residency and practice positions. From what we were explained, even though the decrease in the number of residency positions was expected for a few years, the universities did not reduce the number of medical students being trained to match the expected number of residency spots. Consequently, the students graduating this year will not have a guaranteed residency position at the end of their medical school training and were organizing protests to bring attention to the issue. We spent two days in Liege with Professor Gillet and Dr. Allington. The hospital was located a few kilometers out of town, on the university campus, and was surrounded by beautiful parks and gardens. We had the opportunity to observe a few spine cases, both adult and paediatric. For Alex, our next stop in Liege was extremely exciting, and probably the highlight of her trip, as it was a mere 13km from where she lived for five years as a child. She was able to spend a weekend in the small village where she grew up, and had a chance to catch up with several elementary school and family friends that she only gets the chance to see every few years. Highlights included a magic show, the local village fair, meeting her friend’s two year old daughter, and lunch with everyone organized by family friends at their restaurant. Our visit to Hôpital Universitaire Erasme was highlighted by their anatomy and biomechanics labs. The have a very advanced gait lab and anatomy lab for testing muscle function and upper limb biomechanics. We had the opportunity to see many of the projects they were working on. Their anatomy lab is one of the oldest in Europe and had many amazing prosections and specimens - some over 150 years old.
Dr. Cornu showing us around Brussels.
Alex eating the famous waffles of Liege bringing back childhood memories of the County Fair.
COA Bulletin ACO - Spring / Printemps 2015