• Faculty Members
• Directors & Staff
• Hospitals

Division of Emergency Medicine

Michelle Welsford

BSc, MD, ABEM, FACEP, FRCPC

Education and Professional Standing

• FACEP, Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, 2003
• ABEM, Diplomate of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, 2001
• NAEMSP, Medical Director’s Course & Practicum, 2000
• Prehospital Care Subspecialty, University of Toronto, ON, 2000
• FRCPC, Emergency Medicine, University of Toronto, ON, 2000
• MD, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, 1995
• BSc (Kinesiology), Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, 1991

Research and Clinical Interests

Dr. Welsford is a staff emergency physician at Hamilton Health Sciences, and an Associate Professor at McMaster University where she works extensively with undergraduate medical students, emergency residents in the two training streams, and EMS Fellows. She received the Division of Emergency Medicine Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007. She is also the Regional Medical Director for nine ambulance services associated with the Hamilton Health Sciences Centre for Paramedic Education and Research.

Dr. Welsford’s academic and research interests include prehospital and emergency department management of acute coronary syndromes, acute decompensated congestive heart failure (CHF), and cardiac resuscitation. Additionally, she is involved with the continuum of care of STEMI patients from the field through to the hospital including use of prehospital 12-lead ECGs, STEMI management by paramedics, triage directly to cardiac centres, and optimization of first contact to reperfusion time.

Dr. Welsford is currently involved in several EMS multi-centre research studies in paramedic triage, paramedic cardiac resuscitation, and paramedic trauma resuscitation. She was also a taskforce member and worksheet author for the ILCOR Consensus 2005 ACS/AMI Guidelines as well as ACS/AMI Writing Group Member for the AHA 2005 CPR & ECC Guidelines. She is currently working with the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada and American Heart Association on the 2010 ILCOR Guidelines