The Neurosurgery residency program is designed to provide an excellent patient care experience and dedicated responsibility.
PGY1
During this rotation, neurosurgery interns are introduced to the fundamentals of neurosurgery
patient evaluation, examination, diagnosis, diagnostic test ordering and interpretation, communication, and interdisciplinary care in a range of clinical settings. Academic knowledge will be acquired in board rounds, journal clubs, grand rounds, and subspecialty conferences, with the resident actively involved in both learning and presenting. Basic technical skills and procedures will be acquired both in the intensive care unit and operating room environments. On the clinical service, the resident will demonstrate honesty, the ability to learn from mistakes, and how to work in a complex health care environment at the level of the individual patient, the care team, the department, the hospital, and the system.
Rotations will provide exposure to critically ill patients, including the medical aspects of their care, with neurocritical care education being provided by specialists with a focus on the entire context of the medical condition.
Residents will evaluate surgical patients during their Neurosurgery and Trauma rotations. They will be responsible for patients, (including surgical procedures), appropriate for their training level under the supervision of faculty and senior residents. Residents also see these patients in the outpatient clinic and receive teaching there about the pre-and post operative care.
PGY2
During the PGY2 year, the resident will focus on initial evaluation and stabilization of on-call consultation patients, including those in the emergency department, trauma, and inpatient settings. An additional focus will be the evaluation and management of patients in the intensive care unit setting, including the full range of disease types, such as closed head injury, subarachnoid hemorrhage, brain tumors, etc… and a wide variety of elective surgical conditions. High priority will be placed on developing skills of efficient assessment of patients, generation of differential diagnoses, and concise and well-formulated presentations. The resident will be familiarized with more complex surgical procedures than in the PGY1 year and gain the necessary operating room skills to position patients, plan incisions, and carry out basic approaches and closure of surgical incisions under appropriate supervision.
PGY3
The PGY3 year is divided into three blocks which include, endovascular surgery, spine surgery, and pediatric neurosurgery. In each of these rotations specific knowledge and skills related to those subspecialties will be acquired.
Specifically, on endovascular surgery, the resident will gain knowledge about catheter-based diagnosis and therapies, including diagnostic angiography and venography, aneurysm embolization, and intra-arterial stroke therapy.
On the spine rotation, the resident will learn the clinic evaluation of spine patients, patient selection for surgery, and the surgical management of spinal disorders.
On the pediatric neurosurgery rotation, the resident will learn the clinic evaluation of pediatric neurosurgical patients, patient selection for surgery, and the surgical management of various types of disorders, including, but not limited to myelomeningocele repair, brain tumor removal, vagal nervestimulator placement, subdural grid placement, cortical seizure focus resection, spinal cord detethering, Chiaridecompression, and craniofacial remodeling.
PGY4
The PGY4 year will further cement the confidence of the resident to evaluate patients of increasing complexity. The resident will strive to master more advanced surgeries. A greater role will be taken to provide supervision and instruction to more junior residents. In conferences, the PGY4 resident will take an increasing role in researching and presenting topics and in organizing conferences. The resident will attend subspecialty Specialty Clinics to learn more about the specific evaluation and management of the diseases and pathologies seen in those clinics.
PGY5
The research year is intended to give the resident a grounding in critical thinking as applied to the generation and analysis of data in research. Research in our program will be broadly defined in terms of systematic and evidence-based methods to advance knowledge. All residents will be expected to gain a broad training in the fundamentals of research, including human subjects compliance, data generation and data integrity, protocol design, subject recruitment, statistical analysis, and the writing of scientific papers. In addition, each resident will undertake one or more projects wherein he or she will pursue a specific line of neurosurgery or neuroscience inquiry under the supervision of an accomplished research mentor.
PGY6 (Chief Year)
The Chief Resident year is the culmination of the clinical training program. The chief resident is meant to take a high degree of responsibility for all neurosurgical patients, academic functions, and service problems; to serve as a representative of the neurosurgery service; and to supervise all neurosurgical learners. This will occur under the supervision of faculty, who will provide progressive and appropriate delegation of increasing levels of authority. The chief resident will become competent to perform the full range of neurosurgical procedures and care for the full range of neurosurgical conditions. In addition, the neurosurgery faculty will work with the chief resident to identify an area or areas within neurosurgical practice for him or her to achieve special expertise before graduation.
PGY7
The goal of the PGY7 year is to allow the resident to gain additional preparation for a neurosurgical career through either a clinical fellowship or an additional research experience. If on a clinical fellowship, the resident will focus on one or more specific areas of neurosurgery (Specialty Clinic) to gain additional refinement and expertise, for instance in a specialty area such as cerebrovascular surgery, spine, functional and epilepsy, or brain tumor surgery. If on a research fellowship, the PGY7 resident will continue to function within the academic life of the neurosurgery residency while primarily being dedicated to an area of scholarly pursuit designed to further neurosurgical knowledge. Most residents are expected to do a clinical fellowship or a transition-to-practice general rotation.
Didactics
Residents will attend department specific didactics such as Grand Rounds, M & M, Journal Club, Teaching Rounds, Board Review, and Case Conferences.
Neurosurgery Residency - Sample Schedule
| Rotation Schedule – PGY1 | |
| General Neurosurgery | 6 Months |
| Neurology | 2 Months |
| Neuroradiology | 1 Month |
| Neurocritical Care | 1.5 Months |
| Neurotrauma Care | 1.5 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY2 | |
| General Neurosurgery | 12 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY3 | |
| Spine | 3 Months |
| Endovascular | 3 Months |
| Pediatric Neurosurgery | 6 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY4 | |
| General Neurosurgery | 6 Months |
| Select Specialty Elective | 6 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY5 | |
| Research | 12 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY6 (Chief Year) | |
| General Neurosurgery | 12 Months |
| Rotation Schedule – PGY7 | |
| Enfolded Fellowship | 12 Months |