The surgical residency program has received the maximum five-year accreditation with commendation, from the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) as it demonstrated exceptional compliance with the ACGME's requirements for Graduate Medical Education.
The surgery residency program is structured with increasing incremental responsibilities culminating in the chief resident assuming total responsibility for patient care under the supervision of the attending physician staff. During the course of their training, residents are exposed to a wide variety of clinical problems in general and specialty surgeries, including thoracic, vascular, burn care and trauma surgery.
Since the subspecialties do not have fellowships, the general surgical residents take full responsibility for patient care in the subspecialties. For burn care, surgical residents rotate to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. For transplantation, residents rotate to Mount Sinai Medical Center.
The Hospital maintains a very active Emergency Department. Surgical residents serve as surgical consultants for the Emergency Department in their senior years. Residents are also assigned to general and sub-specialty surgery outpatient clinics.
Experience in critical care is obtained in the second year, when there is a formal, full-time assignment for three months to the surgical intensive care unit at NewYork-Presbyterian/Brooklyn Methodist. All residents are well indoctrinated in monitoring procedures, blood gas interpretations and cardio-respiratory physiology and respiratory care, including the use of ventilators.
The Department of Surgery has a well-organized teaching schedule. This includes conferences and rounds given by the chairman and the faculty. There are approximately ten hours of weekly formal surgical conferences that include professorial rounds, surgical grand rounds, morbidity and mortality conferences, journal clubs and service rounds. Tuesdays are educational days and residents have no surgical responsibility except for emergency procedures from 6:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. For more information, follow the link below.
The department has surgical physician's assistants (PAs) who provide care for the surgical specialties including neurology, orthopedic and cardiac surgery. Each general surgery service has two PAs. Night and weekend coverage for the general surgery patients is shared by the residents and PAs.
The general surgery residency is non-pyramidal. Three chief residents graduate each year from the program. A preliminary residency, for those planning a career in a surgically related specialty, is available for one to two years. All the first year positions are offered through the National Resident Matching Program.