Didactics

A comprehensive didactic schedule is designed to repeat itself every two years, so the resident is exposed to materials from the vantage point of both a junior and senior resident. The didactic component of the residency is closely integrated with the clinical experience and consists of weekly teaching conferences, journal clubs, anatomic lab dissections and training at the Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix Simulation Education and Training (SimET) Center.

Clinical Experience

A total of 34 months are spent on the oral and maxillofacial surgery service with rotations at the following sites: Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix and the Phoenix VA Health System/Carl T Hayden Medical Center. The remaining 14 months of training are devoted to off-service rotations in internal medicine (two months), anesthesia (five months), general surgery/ICU (four months), ENT (one month), plastic surgery (one month) and neurosurgery (one month).

The hospital service at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix is a busy service responsible for the majority of facial trauma at our institution and performed over 900 operating room cases last year. In addition to the management of facial trauma, our caseload also includes management of head and neck infections, maxillofacial pathology, facial skeleton anomalies (congenital and acquired), obstructive sleep apnea, temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMD)/facial pain and routine dentoalveolar surgery including wisdom teeth extraction and dental implant placement.