Peter C. Wing
#610 - 2733 Heather Street, D6 - HP
Vancouver, BC V5Z 3J5
Tel: 604-875-5857
Fax: 604-875-5858

Clinical Professor (retired), Division of Spine, Department of Orthopaedics, University of British Columbia.

English by birth and Canadian by nationality, Dr Wing received his medical training in Edinburgh, graduating in 1966. He interned in Des Moines, Iowa. After a short spell of general practice in the UK he moved to Canada to train in Vancouver as an orthopaedic surgeon, also completing at that time a Master's degree with a research project focussed on the analysis of spinal pain–related disability after lumbar intervertebral fusion. He was awarded the FRCS(C) in 1975.

For several years he practised general orthopaedics including knee and hip arthroplasty, then focussed on surgery of the degenerative spine and care of those with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). He formed a multidisciplinary back pain clinic, with a research interest in the problem of back pain in microgravity.  Another interest during this time was injury prevention (he initiated the Spinal Cord Injury Prevention Program, which later evolved into the BC Injury Prevention Centre). He was for some years the head of Orthopaedics at Shaughnessy Hospital then (with the closure of Shaughnessy) Spinal Orthopaedics at Vancouver General Hospital, remaining (prior to retirement) a member of the newly-formed Combined Neurosurgical and Orthopaedic Spine Program at VGH. He has been on the Board of the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) and the Council of the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS), and co-hosted the first combined annual meeting of these two organisations in Vancouver in 2002.

Dr Wing served terms as the chair of the Vancouver General Hospital and then the Coastal Health Authority Medical Advisory Committee. He also chaired the expert panel for the Consortium for Spinal Cord Medicine which developed the Clinical Practise Guideline on Early Acute Management in Adults with SCI, a CPG for Health-care professionals (2008). Following a workshop in Sydney, this standard was adapted for the Australian situation and has been presented at the Japanese and the UK annual SCI meetings. He chaired the Rick Hansen Institute (RHI) Translational Research Advisory Committee for a short period and continues as the RHI representative on the Steering Committee for the Consortium for SCI medicine. He is on the advisory panel developing standards for acute and rehabilitation SCI care for Accreditation Canada (an RHI-sponsored programme).

More recently he has published on the topic of global mapping of SCI epidemiology. He has taught on the subject of SCI acute care in South Africa, Uganda, India and Nepal and is working with ISCoS on the development of an e-learning curriculum for SCI. He is on the Editorial Board of the journal Spinal Cord. His wife, a physiatrist with a particular interest in SCI, and he are currently assisting two young Nepalese physicians towards specialty training in spinal surgical care and SCI rehabilitation.
Five most recent publications:

Cripps RA, Lee BB, Wing P, Weerts E, Mackay J, Brown D: A global map for traumatic spinal cord injury epidemiology: towards a living data repository for injury prevention. Spinal Cord (2011) 49, 493–501

Biering-Sørensen F, Alexander MS, Burns S, Charlifue S, DeVivo M, Dietz V, Krassioukov A, Marino R,
Noonan V, Post MW, Stripling T, Vogel L, Wing P. Recommendations for translation and reliability testing of international spinal cord injury data sets. Spinal Cord. 2011 Mar; 49(3):357-60.

Lee BB, Cripps RA, Woodman RJ, Biering-Sørensen F, Wing P, Campbell R, Noonan VK, Wang D, Stander J, Lee BS, Harrison JE: Development of an international spinal injury prevention module: application of the international classification of external cause of injury to spinal cord injury. Spinal Cord. 2010 Jun; 48(6):498-503.

Wing PC: Early acute management of adults with SCI: a clinical practice guideline for health-care providers. Who should read it? J Spinal Cord Med. 2008; 31(4):360

Wing PC et al: Clinical Practise Guidelines: Early Acute Management in Adults with SCI, a CPG for Health-care professionals. (Chair, evidence review panel) Pub by Consortium for Spinal Cord Medicine, Washington DC May 2008; also published in J. Spinal Cord Medicine 2008 (31)

Contact information:

Professional issues:        peter.wing@vch.ca
General:                              pwing@mail.ubc.ca