Goals
& Objectives
General Surgery
Subspecialties
VAMC
Monthly Call Schedule
Annual Schedule
Surgical Residency Program
Rotation Goals and Objectives
This department has always believed that a complete surgeon should be an "internist who operates."
In caring for patients with diseases which are unique to the discipline of Surgery, the need to know basic science information and to correlate it in a synthetic and analytic way to the end of differential diagnosis and treatment is an essential ingredient for the thinking surgeon.
The goal, therefore, of the basic science educational aspect of this program is to prepare the surgical resident for a lifetime continuum of education in Surgery by use of the Socratic method of instruction.
The presentation if basic science information pertinent to the discipline of Surgery with emphasis on its practical application through the medium of daily teaching rounds, operative experience, teaching conferences, reading assignments, basic science conferences, and interaction in the outpatient clinic.
The optimum means if education with respect to correlative basic science occurs in the daily contact with patients, on rounds and in the operating room as well as in the outpatient arena. Discussion of basic science information relating to the patients presenting complaints which allow one to arrive at a logical plan to study the patient, a logical diagnostic agenda, and when the diagnosis has been made, a logical therapeutic approach is the optimum method by which correlative basic science can be utilized on a practical basis. An obvious example of this approach occurs when the attending and resident staff are together in the operating room. Each operative experience should be a lesson in surgical anatomy and each resected specimen should constitute the basis for a learning experience in gross pathology. When frozen sections are desired, personal viewing if the frozen section by the resident enhances their knowledge of the micropathology involved.
A Basic Science Conference was instituted in 1988 and structured to cover the following the following subjects on a 24 month cycle: Wound Healing, Hemostasis and Blood Disorders, Oncology, Shock and Circulatory Physiology, Surgical Microbiology, Respiratory Physiology, Gastrointestinal Physiology, Genitourinary Physiology, Surgical Endocrinology, Surgical Nutrition, Fluid and Electrolyte Balance, Metabolic Response to Injury, Musculoskeletal Biomechanics and Physiology, Immunobiology and Transplantation, Applied Surgical Anatomy, Surgical Pathology.