Fellowship opportunities

Supervised by Dr Ch’ng, the post is designed for candidates who intend to pursue sub-specialised training in complex ablative and reconstructive (microsurgical and non-microsurgical) surgery of the head and neck especially the face, management of regional nodal basins including sentinel node biopsy, parotidectomy and neck dissection, facial nerve surgery, and increasingly, facial aesthetic surgery.

The applicant should be a certified surgeon or in the final year of training in the specialty of plastic and reconstructive, otolaryngology, head and neck, maxillofacial or general surgery. Prior exposure to microsurgical reconstruction is preferred.

The position is based at the Head and Neck Cancer Service at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse Cancer Centre, but the Fellow is also expected to participate in activities at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Plastic Surgery Department and the Melanoma Institute of Australia.

The Head and Neck Cancer Service is a world-class department. Some of the other Head and Neck surgeons the Fellow is expected to work with include:

• Professor Carsten Palme (Head of Department)
• Professor Jonathan Clark
• Associate Professor Michael Elliott
• Professor Hubert Low
• Associate Professor Kerwin Shannon
• Dr James Wykes
• Dr Julia Crawford
• Dr Tim Manzie
• Dr Leba Sarkis

The subspecialty focus of each surgeon is different. Associate Professor Ch’ng is the only combined plastic and reconstructive, and head and neck surgeon in the team.

Collectively the department performs approximately 280-300 free flaps per year. The Facial Surgical Oncology and Reconstructive Surgery Fellow is expected to be the co-surgeon/first assistant for approximately 70 free flaps over 12 months.

There are three other Head & Neck Fellows in the department, therefore the on-call rota is 1:4.

Please direct any enquiries about the fellowship post to sydney.chng@sydney.edu.au