Mission Statement

The programs mission is to provide our residents with a comprehensive orthopedic surgery education with an emphasis on the delivery of excellent patient care, academic achievement and the discovery of new knowledge in musculoskeletal medicine.

Program Aims

• Train future physicians to be lifelong learners, committed to self-reflection, self-assessment, and improvement
• Deliver a core curriculum allowing residents to gain knowledge that reflects understanding in the art of inquiry and science of discovery
• Develop clinical reasoning and judgement skills necessary to approach complex as well as common problems that present to the generalist
• Develop the necessary skills and knowledge used in the areas of teaching, quality and safety, and scholarship
• Provide clinical experiences allowing residents to learn and practice delivering team-based care that reflects respect for patient values and preferences
• Provide opportunities and flexibility supporting individualized career plans
• Foster a learning environment that promotes progressive responsibility and graduated autonomy
• Maintain a culture of wellness in which resident support, camaraderie, and mentorship

Dr. Ruth Jackson, the first board-certified female orthopedist, began her training in Iowa City in 1928 under the tutelage of Dr. Arthur Steindler. Dr. Jackson’s perseverance served as an inspiration for many aspiring female orthopedists that succeeded her. The Ruth Jackson Orthopedic Society, founded in her honor, serves a membership of over 600 practicing female orthopedists as a forum for mentorship and overcoming the challenges of gender disparity.

The Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation has remained stalwart in its commitment to Dr. Steindler's founding tenants. The faculty and residency have featured a strong female presence for several decades, training women who have gone on to positions of local and national leadership. We believe that increasing diversity within orthopedics encourages integration of new viewpoints, begets innovative ideas, and ultimately provides the highest level of care for our patients. Read more about University of Iowa women in orthopedics.

Our department offers the Ruth Jackson-Steindler Orthopedics Clerkship award, which supports housing and travel to rotating medical students who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence and an interest in advancing diversity within the specialty of orthopedics.

Our residents participate in outreach opportunities such as the Perry Initiative and Girls Go STEM.

Our female residents have an excellent academic track record, both in terms of publications and grant funding. Recently funded resident grants include:

• Biomechanical Comparison of Syndesmotic Reconstructions with and without Deltoid Ligament Repair, OREF 2019
• The Perry Initiative Medical Student Outreach Program – submitted to the University of Iowa Diversity Catalyst Seed Grant 2019
• Travel Grant from the MidAmerica Orthopedic Association to present at the 2020 meeting
• Travel-related grant from the Ruth Jackson Orthopedic Society for travel and presentation costs for the 2020 AAOS meeting

Policies and Guidelines

• Parental leave policy
• Guidelines to support breastfeeding
• University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics Fertility Preservation

Orthopedic residents at University of Iowa benefit from one of the most resident-friendly call schedules.

Four of the seven interns split the weekend into 12-hour shifts when they are on their orthopedic rotations.  

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PGY2 Call

During the PGY2 year, residents take in house weeknight call (5 p.m. to 7 a.m.) once a week. Each rotation, with the exception of trauma, is assigned a night of the week to cover. The trauma PGY2 does not take call during their two months on the trauma service.

Weekly Schedule

• Monday: PGY2 on the hand service
• Tuesday: PGY2 on thejoint replacement service
• Wednesday: PGY2 on the sports service
• Thursday: PGY2 on the spine service
• Friday: PGY2 on the foot/ankle and tumor service

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PGY3 Call

PGY3 residents are no longer in-house first call. They are the mid-level on call and only come in to help the junior operate, reductions, and more complex patient issues. Call averages every sixth day. The PGY3 residents also cover VA call when they are on-call.

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PGY4 and PGY5 Call

​PGY4 and PGY5 residents graduate to senior level call and usually only come in to operate. Since call is shared by 12 residents, call averages every twelfth day.

The residency program has an evaluation program based on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) six core competencies. Our eventual goal is to move our program toward competency-based education. This will require optimizing and increasing the number of resident evaluation methods. This is the future of modern surgical education.

Each resident has a “scorecard,” which grows and evolves during their training. It includes the results of their standardized tests (OITE), professionalism and communication surveys, global faculty evaluations, and focused faculty review that occurs semi-annually. Increasingly, the scorecard will incorporate real-time evaluations of surgical skill.

The Clinical Competency Committee (CCC) meets twice a year to assess resident milestones and comprehensively evaluate each resident. The program director and associate program director then meets with each resident to provide CCC recommendations and discuss their progress. 

Our residency program is tightly linked with evaluation methods that are being developed by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS) in knowledge, skills and behaviors. These will increasingly become national standards and we are all proud to have been at the forefront of assessing these new methods for the ABOS and incorporating them into our evaluation program.

In addition, our department has an ABOS grant to study laboratory-based skills assessment methods in areas of hybrid virtual reality surgical simulation. These efforts have engaged the residents as research subjects and authors of projects on how surgical skills are assessed with a goal of optimizing performance in the operating room. We believe that skills training and assessment of skill in the skills lab are increasingly important parts of resident training, and we will remain at the forefront of developing and utilizing these methods.

Education day-to-day in Clinic and Operating Rooms

All full-time faculty in the Department of Orthopedics are committed to the education process and participate in resident education. Residents are engaged in teaching and learning on daily rounds, in the clinic and in the operating room.

Our environment is incomparable for focused daily orthopedic education. Our department covers all subspecialties in orthopedic surgery with the entire department located in a single area. This allows for the opportunity to efficiently gain a fundamental orthopedic education in each specialty area. We have a small number of fellows, allowing our residents to have close relationships with faculty members.

Our residents take part in designing and delivering our resident educational curriculum. Residents prepare and present weekly during our Grand Rounds, Morbidity and Mortality (M&M), and Patient Safety and Quality Improvement (PSQI) conferences.

Resident Teams

Residents work together in teams based on subspecialties. These teams comprise two to four residents stratified by resident year. These team relationships provide senior residents the chance to mentor and guide their junior colleagues along the path to success and increasing competency.

This close working relationship between residents on the teams is combined with the "resident room." This is where all the residents have individual workstations. Residents are provided a unique working and educational environment where they can gain confidence and surmount challenges amongst their peers.

Core Lecture Series

The core lecture series is scheduled one year in advance. It is a comprehensive offering of educational sessions on foundational principles in orthopedic surgery. The conference is held each Monday from 6:45-7:15 a.m., each Tuesday from 6:30-8:00 a.m. and Wednesday from 6:30-7:00 a.m.

Monday's conference is organized by subspecialty teams within orthopedics and covers all aspects of orthopedic clinical care (such as trauma, hand, arthroplasty, etc.). It is a two-year rotating curriculum with lecture topics and case-based discussions given by faculty members.

Tuesday's conference is a profile departmental educational session, centered on Grand Rounds, M&M, and PSQI.

Wednesday's conference is a case-bared conference led by a faculty member. It is highly interactive and informative, focusing on diagnosis and treatment of orthopedic conditions.

Team Based Conferences

Subspecialty team conferences review current cases and relevant recent literature. This is a smaller group format and focus, which occurs within the team structure. All subspecialties have these conferences and are the highest rated. This is due to the small group format and high faculty to resident ratio.

Journal Club

Journal Club is a monthly subspecialty based conference organized by fourth-year residents. Those in attendance include residents, medical students, and subspecialty faculty. Topics are selected primarily from current literature. This includes the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and other highly regarded subspecialty journals.

The goal of Journal Club is to allow residents to critically read and interpret the best available evidence and assess study design and statistics. It teaches a commitment to lifelong learning and critical analysis of new information. These are crucial throughout an orthopedic surgeon's career.

Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

The Quality Improvement and Patient Safety conference occurs on Tuesday morning once a month. It focuses on highlighting important problems and solutions to enhance musculoskeletal care delivery within University of Iowa Health Care.

This is an opportunity for PGY1, 2, and 3 residents, along with a faculty member, to choose a topic to investigate the implications of a potential issue or problem within our system and propose solutions. This promotes resident engagement in determining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that challenge health care delivery.

This is another highly rated conference that attracts significant local, regional, and national attention. The result of the resident's project often leads to a published manuscript.

Senior Residents' Day

Senior Residents' Day is a celebration of our ongoing commitment to research. The PGY4 residents present their senior research projects. These are formally discussed by renowned visiting professors and the graduating PGY5 residents. The visiting professors give keynote lectures to our residents, fellows, and graduate students in attendance.

This is an incredible weekend celebrating our commitment to ongoing knowledge discovery and the career transitions of our exceptional PGY5 residents. We devote a full day and a half to these scientific sessions.

Carroll B. Larson Shrine Lectureship

The Carroll B. Larson Shrine Lectureship is an annual two-day conference with the goal of updating Iowa orthopedists in current diagnosis and management of children's orthopedic problems. Stuart Weinstein, MD, hosts this lectureship and invites renowned outside children's orthopedic surgeons as the guest speaker to present lecture and review interesting cases.

The Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation offer our residents outstanding opportunities to participate in research. With the support of scientists specializing in biomechanics, cell biology, and animal research, our department is world-renowned for its contributions to orthopedic basic science, clinical, and transitional research.

We have an unparalleled tradition of long-term follow-up studies in a variety of orthopedic conditions. The department supports well equipped state of the art biomechanics, cell biology, biochemistry, image analysis, histopathology and animal surgery facilities. Through collaborations with a wide variety of faculty mentors, our residents are exposed to musculoskeletal research in its entirety. Participating in research helps develop the ability to critically evaluate currently accepted ideas and practices and new information and thereby become a better clinician.

We have a faculty research committee that guides residents through our research program. The committee is comprised of clinical and basic research faculty and has enough breadth and expertise to mentor residents in any research direction.

The program begins with introductions to our research environment in the PGY1 year. It then progresses the residents through developing project proposals and grant applications and concludes with their final research presentation at the end of their PGY4 year. In addition to guidance and mentoring, the department provides support for experimental design and statistical analysis, approval of clinical protocols, financial support for supplies, materials, and presentations at meetings.

In the PGY1 and PGY2 years, residents perform a quality improvement/patient safety project. These projects are designed to introduce residents to a structured approach to understand and evaluate the quality and safety performance of the health care system they work in and how it affects the patients in the system. The goal is to identify an area for improvement, then recommend, implement, or evaluate a trial solution.

This process relies on primary and secondary data collection and review. The plan for and the results of these projects are also presented to the department by the resident. Many of these projects are presented at national meetings and/or published. Others form the basis of resident grants. Some are expanded during subsequent years into the resident’s senior research project.

Beginning in the PGY2 year, and culminating in the PGY4 year, residents conduct a senior research project. Working with a faculty mentor, residents propose and develop a research project. Projects undergo a formal grant application process and review by the research committee. They execute their project, upon approval, then present at the end of the PGY4 year.

The expectation is that this project will be presented in a profile external conference. It will also be submitted to high quality peer reviewed journals such as:

• Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 
• Journal of Orthopedic Research
• Journal of Hand Surgery
• Journal of Orthopedic Trauma
• Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 
• Clinical Orthopedic and Related Research.

We feel by promoting exploration and inquiry into musculoskeletal conditions and care, we not only contribute to the future, but improve the lives of those we treat within our own community. Our senior resident day research program devotes 1.5 days for resident research, along with having two national visiting professors’ critique and discuss the residents work.

Our residents are very productive in research, with many performing additional research studies beyond the required research projects. Many residents apply and receive grants and/or publish numerous studies. Some individuals develop a concentrated effort in one area, and others participate and publish on a wide range of projects. These research experiences attract many to future academic careers and build a foundation for success in the pursuit of highly sought-after fellowships.

The residency rotations are structured around three fundamental principles:

• Education based on the classic orthopedic subspecialties
• Graduated responsibility based on residency experience
• Residents work in small teams with dedicated subspecialized faculty members

The goals are achieved through a model of small resident and faculty teams based on the orthopedic subspecialties, including:

• Bone and soft tissue tumors
• Children's orthopedics
• Foot and ankle
• General orthopedics (VA)
• Hand and upper extremity
• Joint replacement
• Shoulder
• Spine
• Sports medicine
• Trauma

Each resident rotates on these teams up to three times during their training and progressing from junior level responsibilities to senior level responsibilities. Small teams allow focused educational experiences with subspecialized faculty members. Residents working in small teams share responsibilities and benefit from the experience of their more senior colleagues.

Rotations during the orthopedic resident's training cover all of the orthopedic subspecialties.

Resident Rotation Schedule

Rotation Summaries

Bone and Soft Tissue Tumors-Silver Team

Residents rotate twice on the tumor service as a PGY2 and PGY4. This 2-month block is split with the foot and ankle service and is designed as a 1-month immersive experience on each service. Residents are responsible for preparing for operations, caring for inpatients, seeing consults, and helping in the outpatient clinic. The clinical exposure is varied and includes benign bone tumors, complex sarcoma resections, and stabilization of metastatic disease of bone. Given the limited formal exposure to orthopedic oncology, residents are expected to read extensively while on service.

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Children's Orthopedics-Green Team

Children's Orthopedics is on  three rotations, PGY1, PGY3, and PGY5. Residents are exposed to pediatric trauma patients not only on this rotation, but also while on call and on the four rotations on the orthopedic trauma service. Residents also take care of children with hand problems on three hand rotations throughout their residency.

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Foot and Ankle-Silver Team

The residents rotate on the foot and ankle service three times during their residency, PGY2 and PGY4. There is one foot and ankle fellow to help out during the year as well.  Children's foot and ankle experience is also obtained on the children's orthopedic service.

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General Orthopedics (VA)-Gray Team

A portion of the resident's general orthopedic experiences are during three rotations at the VA, twice as a PGY3 and once as a PGY5.

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Hand and Upper Extremity-Yellow Team

The resident will be on the hand and upper extremity service three times, PGY2, PGY3 and PGY5, which is devoted to reconstructive and traumatic conditions of the hand and wrist. While on call, residents treat traumatic and infectious conditions of the hand. Hand call for our Level 1 Trauma Center is split between the orthopedics and plastic surgery staff. A hand fellow is on also on this service to help out during the year.  

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Joint Replacements-Blue Team

There are three 10 week rotations (PGY2, PGY4, PGY5) on the total joint team with a focus on hip and knee reconstruction. Each resident will get extensive experience with complex reconstructions and revisions.

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Shoulder-Pink Team

The residents rotate on the shoulder service twice during their residency, PGY1, PGY2 and PGY4. This allows for a comprehensive exposure to traumatic and degenerative shoulder conditions throughout residency. While on service each resident will gain extensive experience with both arthroscopic an open shoulder reconstruction.

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Trauma-Red Team

Residents treat trauma patients while on call during their entire residency. As an PGY1 spend one month on the general surgery trauma service and two months in the surgical Intensive care unit where they care for patients with multi system trauma and other severely injured patients. They also complete the ATLS course during their first year. As PGY2’s, the residents attend an AO or OTA trauma course. There are four rotations (PGY1, PGY2, PGY3, PGY5) on the orthopedic trauma service focused on all types of musculoskeletal injury including multisystem trauma.  The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics is a fully accredited Level 1 trauma center. The growth in trauma volume has been dramatic and growing yearly.

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Spine-Orange Team

The residents rotate three times on the spine service (PGY1, PGY2, PGY4). The experience on these rotations is a combination of degenerative spinal conditions, spinal deformity and spine trauma. Spine trauma call for our Level 1 Trauma Center is split between orthopedics and neurosurgery on an every other week basis.

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Sports Medicine-Black Team

The residents rotate through the Sports Medicine service three times during their residency experience (PGY2, PGY4 and PGY5 years). While rotating on the Sports Medicine team, they are exposed to a wide variety of athletic injuries of the shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, and ankle in the both the clinic and the operating room. The rotation structure is that of a mentorship model and residents spend 4 weeks with a select faculty member performing all aspects of medical care to athletes. Junior residents quickly develop the necessary skills for basic major joint arthroscopy while senior residents are challenged with more complex tasks such as hip arthroscopy with Dr. Westermann, ankle arthroscopy with Dr. Duchman, and elbow arthroscopy with Dr. Wolf. Additional arthroscopic training is achieved in our on-site skills lab where protected time is provided with cadaveric specimens one afternoon a week. An orthopedic Sports Medicine fellow is also a member of the sports team, however their presence does not detract to resident education in any way (1:1 faculty to trainee ratio). Sports coverage opportunities are also available involving the University of Iowa athletic teams and local area high school football.

The Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation offers fourth-year electives in orthopedic surgery to visiting medical students enrolled in a LCME-accredited medical school during the months of July through November. These four-week rotations are approved and competitively arranged by the department.

Each student will be assigned to one of our orthopedic subspecialty teams (trauma, adult reconstruction, sports, spine, oncology, foot and ankle, pediatrics, shoulder, and hand). Preferences for team assignments will be solicited, but not guaranteed, based upon availability. The teams consist of orthopedic faculty, residents, medical students, and advance practice providers. Students will work closely with their team during their time here. Responsibilities include morning inpatient rounds, attendance at department and team conferences, evaluating patients in outpatient clinics, and assisting in the operating room. Students will also be assigned to take overnight call during the rotation, where they will work closely with the resident call team.

If you are a visiting medical student who is interested in the Orthopedic Residency Program, please review the visiting medical student guidelines to apply to our clerkships.

If you have questions, please contact our Medical Student Coordinator, Tonia Johnston at tonia-johnston@uiowa.edu.

Please join us for the following virtual open houses.  If you are interested, email ortho-residency@healthcare.uiowa.edu and provide your name, school, and the email address where you’d like the invitation sent. Invitations will be sent out on the morning of the open house.