Meet the General Surgery Residents

The UT Southwestern General Surgery Residency Program is a five-year program that provides residents with a broad experience in surgery. The program is well rounded with an excellent balance of clinical training, structured education, and research opportunities. The main goal is to prepare the resident for a career in community surgical practice, research, academic surgery, or post-residency fellowship training.

There are currently 13 approved categorical positions in the general surgery residency program. Additional preliminary residents train in the program during the first one to three years and matriculate into subspecialties such as neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, otorhinolaryngology, oral surgery, plastic surgery, and urology.

Rotations during the five years include the general surgery services, trauma services, and surgical specialty services at Parkland Health & Hospital System, Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Children’s Health℠, and UT Southwestern University Hospitals

Members of the Chung lab, led by Dr. Dai Chung

Research/Special Education Opportunities

All categorical general surgery residents are required to complete scholarly activity on a project of their choosing. Each resident works with a faculty mentor to develop the protocol, conduct the study, and provide the final analysis. The fifth-year resident projects are formally presented at an annual research conference in June. Many of the projects are submitted for publication in a journal at that time.

While formal laboratory research is not required, the categorical general surgery residents are strongly encouraged to take time off from the residency program to conduct investigative work in a laboratory or to participate in some other advanced educational experience. The structured time usually lasts two years, beginning after the third year. Two or three residents each year have opted for this elective program.

In addition to direct laboratory experience, other programs have been developed through extramural routes such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellowship Program.

The goal of this experience is to prepare the resident for an academic career.

These residents present their work at national meetings and are published in numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Assistant Professor Sarah Oltmann, M.D., guides first-year residents during a central line placement training class.

Conferences

There are numerous scheduled teaching conferences, including weekly teaching rounds on the surgical services, a weekly Chair’s critique conference where patient management is discussed, and surgical grand rounds. There are also several didactic conferences including literature review conferences and basic science of surgery conferences. Finally, each of the surgical services and surgical specialties holds its own teaching conferences, and residents rotating on those services are required to attend conferences given by the faculty and senior residents on those rotations.