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 6:45-7:40 a.m. and each Tuesday from 6:30-7:40 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.