Research

Hands-on experience

Our residency program heavily emphasizes research method development, a critically important consideration in training tomorrow’s successful plastic surgeons. Over the course of your clinical training, you’ll be encouraged to engage in all facets of the research process by:

• formulating a research question
• generating an appropriate study design
• applying for ethics approval and funding
• conducting the study
• disseminating your findings through peer-reviewed publication
• presenting at local, national and international meetings

If you’d like to make research a more significant part of your future careers, we encourage you to pursue funded graduate-level training through Dalhousie University’s Royal College-accredited Clinician Investigator Program.

Learning through discovery

The breadth of our faculty and collaborators’ interests demonstrates our strong commitment to research. The division’s research director, Dr. Michael Bezuhly, actively reviews ongoing research activities and recommends strategies for enhancing and attracting interdepartmental collaboration.

Our researchers participate in a wide variety of areas, including basic science laboratory research, population-based studies and clinical trials. Our key research areas include:

• psychosocial outcomes following breast reconstruction
• development of plastic surgery educational assessment tools
• novel strategies for improving fat graft survival and reducing skin scarring
• clinical outcomes following hand and upper extremity surgery
• vascular anatomic studies to optimize microsurgical outcomes
• molecular biology of craniosynostosis