About the Neurosurgery Rookie Camp

The Canadian Neurosurgery Rookie Camp is an intensive two day course for beginning neurosurgery residents in Canada. It’s designed to help new residents “get their feet wet” with simulations of real-life patient scenarios in the clinic, emergency, and operating room. The simulation exercises expose residents to a wide range of situations at the outset of their training, providing them with experiences that would take years to accumulate in typical clinical training environments.

By using a variety of low, medium and high fidelity simulations—including the world-leading NeuroTouch Neurosurgery Simulator—the Canadian Neurosurgery Rookie Camp puts new residents into realistically demanding situations. This experience helps the residents develop their skills in:

• clinical reasoning
• problem-solving
• leadership
• communication
• procedural technique

The Canadian Neurosurgery Rookie Camp was developed by Dalhousie Medical School’s Division of Neurosurgery in collaboration with the Neurosurgery Specialty Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and with support from the Canadian Neurosurgical Society. The inaugural Canadian Neurosurgery Rookie Camp was held in July 2012 at the Skills Centre for Health Sciences at the Dalhousie University-affiliated QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The 2024 Canadian Neurosurgery Rookie Camp will run on July 19 & 20, 2024. Learn more about this year's camp.

You can see some of the topics being covered here.