PGY2 Dr. Justin Lim awarded $30,000 Resident Research Grant
Dr. Lim received the grant from the PSI Foundation
Our resident, Dr. Justin Lim, was recently awarded a $30,000 Resident Research Grant from the PSI Foundation for his study, “Outcomes of children undergoing benign ovarian surgery in Ontario.”
The study aims to explore the short-term perioperative outcomes and long-term fertility outcomes of all ovarian surgeries performed on kids under the age of 18 in Ontario over the past 20 years. Working with Dr. Andrea Simpson as principal investigator and Dr. Sari Kives and Dr. Lisa Allen as co-investigators, Dr. Lim says the PSI grant will be crucial in enabling the team to conduct the study on a large scale.
“We’re really hoping to get a snapshot of what ovarian surgery in children looks like across the entire province,” explains Dr. Lim, a PGY2 resident. “This grant funding lets us access administrative population-based data to look at this issue on a broader scale, much bigger than we would be able to with a single-institution, single-hospital study.
“I was over the moon when I learned we received the grant,” he added. “I’m really grateful to the entire project team that supported the grant application process, and especially to Dr. Simpson, who provided a lot of mentorship in writing it.”
In fact, Dr. Lim began working on the study as a PGY1. He recalls that as a medical student, he met faculty members in our Department whose research work and quality-improvement initiatives inspired him.
He then joined our residency program determined to begin building his research experience right away.
“Mentorship has played a huge role in getting me involved with research. All of the mentors I have met during med school and residency — Dr. Simpson, Dr. Lindsay Shirreff, Dr. Rachel Soyoun Kim, Dr. Rohan D’Souza —were all doing work outside of their clinical realm that got me really excited. I wanted to find ways that I could similarly contribute to the field.”
“Those research mentors of mine not only fostered my interest in ob-gyn as a specialty, but they fostered my interest in contributing to the body of knowledge that guides our specialty. When you work with people who are passionate about research, that kind of passion and excitement is infectious and it makes you want to get involved.”
“I feel very privileged to be involved in a project like this,” Dr. Lim added. “The people on the team have taught me so much and it’s given me the opportunity to gain foundational research skills that I hope to use throughout the rest of my residency and throughout my career.”