Department Overview
The Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program is committed to resident education with fellowship-trained expertise in trauma, spine care, pediatric orthopaedics, sports medicine, adult-reconstructive, shoulder/elbow, hand surgery and foot/ankle surgery.
Goals
- To develop competent orthopaedic surgeons who have the knowledge base, technical skills, and interpersonal skills necessary to provide cost-effective, compassionate, exemplary patient care and engage in the ethical practice of orthopaedic surgery.
- To remain competent through the critical evaluation and to incorporate information from courses, meetings, and published material into their orthopaedic practices.
- To conduct clinical training that strictly adheres to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) concept of "graded and progressive responsibility" through the use of competency-based methods of evaluation utilizing orthopaedic surgery milestones.
- To graduate orthopaedic surgeons who have developed all of the high-level skills necessary to enter the unsupervised practice of orthopaedic surgery and who will maintain an exemplary level of practice through the life-long learning process. Physicians completing the residency program will be eligible for certification by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Values
- Responsibility
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Transparency
Didactics
Faculty-facilitated education includes monthly conferences covering pathology, basic science, indications, cadaveric dissection, and journal club.
- Grand Rounds: Second, third, fourth, and fifth Wednesday each month*
- Morbidity and mortality (M&M) conference: First Wednesday each month*
- Resident Core Curriculum: Wednesday Weekly*
- Journal Club: Second Wednesday each month*
- Surgical Skills Lab: Wednesday weekly
- Subspecialty indications conferences: Weekly (day and time TBD by rotation director)
- Subspecialty Journal Club: Monthly (day and time TBD by rotation director)
*Note: Surgical Skills lab, Grand Rounds, M&M conference, Resident Core Curriculum Conferences and Journal Club are core conferences in which attendance is mandatory; protected time is allocated from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Evaluations
The New Innovations system is used to track resident evaluations throughout the program. Areas of performance evaluation include the core competencies, milestones, and assessment of level-appropriate surgical skills. Residents are evaluated by faculty members, nursing staff, ancillary health care personnel, and patients. Residents evaluate faculty and the program; both evaluations are anonymous and collected so as not to identify the evaluator. Each resident is evaluated on his or her surgical skills outlined in the bio skills section of the handbook. Further, both residents and faculty have the opportunity to evaluate the program annually.
Residents are evaluated using a variety of methods including:
- End of rotation, faculty evaluations based on the six core competencies.
- Multi-source or 360-degree evaluations from nurses or techs, patients, self, peers, and students
- Chart reviews
- Mock oral exams
- Skills assessment
- Transitions of care
In aggregate, these reports and Orthopaedic In-Training Examination (OITE) scores are considered in semi-annual (and more frequent if necessary) meetings with the Clinical Competency Committee (CCC) and the program coordinator. Areas of excellence in each core competency are recorded. In areas of difficulty, the program director requests that the resident create a plan for improvement and success. These plans are reviewed with the resident's mentor, the CCC and the program director. Progress will be monitored by the program director at monthly meetings, or more frequently if need be, until the difficulties are resolved.