The People

My year as the Craniofacial Fellow at SickKids was an invaluable experience.
I was exposed to an immense breadth of pathologies, as well as allowing me extensive operative experience with exceptional mentors.

It was a pleasure to work within such a dynamic, supportive team while setting myself up for my future practice.

It’s rare in surgery to look back on postgraduate training with kind eyes. The work is stressful, the hours are long, and we all know the tension this can create between trainee and teacher. As a SickKids alumnus, I feel quite differently.

My co-fellows and I still reminisce about our year in Toronto and the faculty who taught us. They’ve mastered another way of doing things there, balancing surgical complexity, busy clinical practice, and research pursuits with genuine human kindness. The staff surgeons remain some of my closest friends and mentors. Ontario’s catchment area—more than 8 million people—funnels the full spectrum of complex craniofacial pathology to your doorstep, and training in Canada, free of the financial pressures that shape decisions elsewhere, teaches you the right way to do things. I left SickKids with the confidence to take on the biggest cases in my first years of practice, a global network of colleagues, and a pedigree that helped me land my dream job as a pediatric craniofacial surgeon.

The Craniofacial fellowship at SickKids was a truly special experience for myself in term of my development & growth as a surgeon & person holistically.

I arrived in Toronto as the COVID-19 pandemic was unravelling. Even though the pandemic presented my family & I with a myriad of challenges, what I now consider my SickKids family welcomed us warmly & helped me develop my Craniofacial knowledge & skills. More importantly, I learnt from the team collectively on how to care for paediatric patients with the utmost compassion, respect & passion.

I am now a Plastic & Reconstructive surgeon in Melbourne, Australia with a mixed public & private practice. I am fortunate to work at the Royal Children’s hospital & Monash Children’s Hospital fulfilling my passion as a Craniofacial surgeon. The opportunity to learn at SickKids from my mentors Drs. Forrest, Phillips & Riesel has helped immensely & I am forever grateful.

My Craniofacial Surgery Fellowship at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in 2021–2022 was one of the most rewarding and transformative experiences of my career. The fellowship offers an exceptional combination of clinical excellence, surgical autonomy, academic rigor, and mentorship within a world-renowned multidisciplinary craniofacial program.

The breadth and complexity of the clinical experience, together with the collaborative culture at SickKids, provided an outstanding environment to develop both technical expertise and clinical judgment. The faculty are internationally recognized leaders who are deeply committed to education, fostering progressive independence while maintaining the highest standards of patient-centered care.

The knowledge, mentorship, and lifelong professional relationships I gained during my fellowship continue to shape my practice today. I am sincerely grateful to the faculty and the entire craniofacial team for an unforgettable training experience, and I wholeheartedly recommend the SickKids Craniofacial Fellowship to anyone seeking world-class craniofacial surgical training.

My fellowship at SickKids was enriching and formative. The program offered broad and diverse clinical exposure, spanning complex craniofacial anomalies, trauma, and cleft care, with a thoughtful progression toward graduated autonomy that fostered both confidence and accountability.

Working within a different health care system deepened my appreciation for multidisciplinary collaboration and resource stewardship, shaping a more adaptable and patient-centered approach to care. I am grateful for the mentorship and environment that emphasized humility, technical excellence, and lifelong learning.