Department Head’s Message


Welcome to The University of British Columbia Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics webpage. Our Department encompasses three important and inter-related areas of medicine: anesthesiology, pharmacology, and therapeutics. A few years ago we underwent substantive governance renewal in the department, intended to facilitate a higher level of collaboration amongst our diverse faculty and student members. We challenge ourselves to create interdisciplinary opportunities and leverage each other’s expertise and connections so that we can foster excellence in research, education, and knowledge translation in several key areas including: cardiorespiratory sciences, neurosciences, perioperative technology integration, clinical outcomes and patient safety, pain, and pharmacoinformatics. The Department has been undergoing exciting growth since 2021, with the addition of new junior faculty in the areas of pharmacogenomics related to pain and cardiorespiratory diseases and chronic pain translational medicine.

Our department is linked with several research centres in the Lower Mainland, and clinically extends across the Province of British Columbia with 550 clinical faculty, 93 anesthesiology residents and several subspecialty fellows. Our members who engage in the advancement of pharmacology and therapeutics include 25 faculty, 21 graduate students, and 39 pharmacology undergraduate students. The Therapeutics Initiative is part of our therapeutics expertise in the department, providing extensive expertise in systematic reviews and education outreach on evidence-based drug prescribing. We welcome your interest in our Department and seek to recruit outstanding learners in our graduate program, anesthesiology and pain medicine residency programs, and clinical and post-doctoral fellowships. Information on our education programs is found via website links. Clinical fellowship positions are managed by the hospital departments; information can be found on our website under the Education tab.

We encourage you to explore the intersecting areas of research, education, and clinical practice within our Department.

-Dr Peter Choi, MD, MSc, FRCPC
Interim Department Head, Anesthesiology Pharmacology & Therapeutics