Program Details
We have designed a Rotation Schedule (PDF) which integrates appropriate rotations during the first four years, and provides chief residency experience in vascular surgery during the fifth year.
- A total of 36 months will be spent on vascular surgery, and 24 months on core or general surgery rotations.
- The schedule has been designed to appropriately interact with current general surgery, intensive care unit, cardiothoracic surgery and cardiology rotations at the appropriate level to optimize learning. It provides six months' experience as the chief resident on general or cardiothoracic surgery, in addition to 12 months of chief resident experience during the last year on vascular surgery.
The residency is organized so that interventional procedures, open surgery, inpatient and outpatient care, and vascular laboratory instruction are integrated in a progressive fashion throughout all years of the program.
Interventional training is done by the vascular surgery faculty in the interventional radiology suite and the operating room, and is fully integrated during all years of training. Residents perform peripheral, renal, mesenteric, great vessel and carotid bifurcation PTA and stenting, as well as vena cava filter placement, thrombolysis, percutaneous closure, and endovascular abdominal and thoracic aneurysm repair. This provides more than sufficient volume to meet interventional credentialing requirements.
Vascular laboratory training is provided in an ICAVL-accredited vascular laboratory administered by the Section which performs about 10,000 studies per year. Residents obtain hands-on duplex scanning experience and didactic sessions to allow application for RVT certification if desired.
Inpatient training and outpatient training expose residents to a wide breadth of patients at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. Volume on the service last year was approximately 1,000 discharges, 6,000 outpatient visits, and 1,000 open operations and 500 procedures in the interventional suite.
Teaching conferences are held each Monday from 7:00 to 11:00 a.m., during protected time when all faculty and residents can attend. These conferences include:
- A weekly preoperative conference for that week's open and interventional cases
- A biweekly didactic conference covering all topics in a core curriculum
- A biweekly interesting case discussion
- A biweekly morbidity and mortality conference
- A biweekly journal club
- A biweekly research conference
- A monthly vascular laboratory conference
- A monthly basic science conference
Vascular residents actively participate and contribute to these conferences to establish their own decision-making and teaching skills.
