Orthopaedic Trauma Fellowship
The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center (STC) Orthopaedic Traumatology Fellowship Program boasts more than 40 years of experience in training orthopaedic trauma surgeons. We are proud of our tradition of excellence in education and have produced a strong alumni base of surgeons who have played important roles in the field of orthopaedic trauma.
Program Strengths:
- Hands on Experience with a High Volume of High Energy Patients: Few centers can compare with the severity or volume of the injured patients seeking care at STC. Our orthopaedic group performs 4,000 trips to the operating room a year, a high percentage of these for polytrauma cases. Fellows have a busy operative experience with a heavy emphasis on difficult high-energy cases.
- Emphasis on Progressive Autonomy: We pride ourselves on producing graduates who are clinically ready to hit the ground running. This is accomplished by a long tradition at our center of allowing fellows more and more autonomy throughout the year. Many surgical educators claim to implement this concept, but we believe this is an area of particular strength at our Center.
- Broad Surgical Exposure Including a Strong Upper Extremity Experience: STC fellows truly operate on all extremities and the pelvis. There are no competing hand, foot and ankle, shoulder, or other fellows vying for fracture cases. We offer a particularly strong experience in fractures of the upper extremity along with pelvis and lower extremity experience.
- Dedicated Clinical Faculty: Our large trauma faculty include skilled educators and experienced surgeons who have dedicated a substantial portion of their lives to the education of our fellows. Our faculty surgeons are at the heart of our success, and we have been fortunate to have a very stable base of experienced clinical educators.
- Strong Didactic Program: Our didactic program involves teaching conferences 5 days a week. The goal of the indication conference is to review every case performed by the fellows. Our curriculum of "chalk talks" and more traditional lectures is augmented by a curriculum of 10 cadaver dissection sessions and six surgical skills labs. A ring fixator course is provided for the fellows each year. Our "educate the educators" didactic program improves the fellows' knowledge of issues in clinical practice, provides skills in running cadaver sessions, sawbones labs, chalk talks, and the teaching of residents in the operating room. Fellows meet with faculty after teaching sessions to improve the fellows' educational skills.
- Targeted Research Program: Our research program sits within a highly successful and well-funded clinical research group. The fellow program is very structured and begins by the fellow choosing from a list of more than 30 Internal Review Board (IRB)-ready projects. Fellows present to the faculty as if attempting to obtain grant funding. Projects are typically completed by February 1 for submission to the Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA). Skills gained during the project vary by the needs of the applicants but include the ability to quickly determine the feasibility of a study ("fail fast") and mentorship with very experienced clinical researchers.
We are proud of the current state of our fellowship but are always striving to make improvements. We believe it is this attitude that has helped us to improve upon the strong tradition that has been passed down to us by the faculty who came before us and will allow us to continue to help produce the next generation of leaders in orthopaedic trauma surgery.
The Orthopaedic Trauma Faculty thanks you again for your interest in our fellowship,
- Brent Bauer, MD
- Robert Beer MD
- Marissa Bonyun, MD
- Andrew Eglseder, MD
- Mark Gage, MD
- Alex Hahn, MD
- Eric Hempen, MD
- Todd Jaeblon, DO
- Aaron Johnson, MD
- Chris Langhammer, MD
- Jason W. Nascone, MD
- Robert V. O'Toole, MD
- Raymond Pensy, MD
- Christopher Renninger, MD
- Marcus F. Sciadini, MD
- Gerard Slobogean, MD
- Karren Takamura, MD