Curriculum

PGY-1 - General Surgery Intership and Neuro-intensive care

8 months of General Surgery and related electives including trauma and surgical intensive care unit

3 months of Neurointensive care under the supervision of Dr. Panayiotis N. Varelas, Director of the Neurointensive Care Unit, and Dr. Tamer Abdelhak

1 month of Neurosurgery

PGY-2 - first clinical Neurosurgery year

Call this year is 1 in 4 in-house. Approximate number of operative days is 10 per month. The junior resident can expect to perform about 200 cases this year. Call duties include ICU calls, floor and ER consults, as well as management of post-operative patients. Floor responsibilities are minimized with the assistance of three PAs. The junior resident spends 6 month rotations with each of the subdivisions of the clinical service designated:

Neuro-oncology/Spine - Rosenblum, Rock, Gates, Kalkanis, Abdulhak, Krishnamurthy, Elisevich

Neuro-vascular/Trauma - Malik, Seyfried, Mahmood, Kole, Sanders, Chedid

In addition, the resident takes neurosurgery written boards this year for self-assessment.

PGY-3 - Research and Clinical Electives

1 month of Radiation Oncology under the supervision of Dr. Samuel Ryu - Director of Cranial and Extracranial Radiosurgery

11 months of clinical or basic research at the resident's discretion. The research project is determined towards the end of the PGY-2 year.

1 month of Neuropathology consisting of lectures 3 days/week from 7 to 9 am

The resident will take the neurosurgery written boards for credit. This year is protected from call responsibilities except for when a junior resident on service is on vacation. The resident attends the RUNN (Research Updates in Neuroscience for Neurosurgeons) course during this year.

PGY-4 - Second clinical Neurosurgery year

The PGY IV year is again a clinical year, similar to the PGY II year, but with more responsibility and particularly more advanced training in the operating room. During this year, the residents have increasing opportunity to be first assistant in the operating room and actually perform surgical procedures as the primary surgeon with the senior staff. Fifty percent of the time this year is spent in the operating room and 50% managing the inpatient service and in hospital/emergency room consultations. Both PGY II and PGY IV include extensive experience with critical care patient management in the dedicated neurosurgical intensive care unit.

PGY-5 - Clinical Electives

6 months of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Children's Hospital of Michigan

3 months of Neuroradiology

3 months of Neurology

PGY-6 - Senior clinical Neurosurgery year

6 months at Henry Ford Hospital - West Bloomfield Campus, a Henry Ford community satellite - During this rotation, the resident works primarily with Drs. Malik, Rosenblum, Chedid, and Krishnamurthy, where general neurosurgery experience is gained in a private practive setting.

6 months resident's choice

PGY-7 - Chief Neurosurgery year

This year the resident acts as the chief resident. It is during this time that the resident has the opportunity to learn supervisory techniques. The resident works directly with the Chairman (Dr. Mark Rosenblum) and Vice Chairman (Dr. Ghaus Malik) for six months each and has the responsibility to supervise their respective service. The chief resident who works with the Chairman also has the administrative responsibility for coordinating conferences, Morbidity and Mortality rounds, and the operative schedule for the entire department. The chief resident working with the Vice Chairman is responsible for the on-call rotations for the junior and senior residents and for performing the jobs of the other chief resident when he/she is away. The chief residents have the opportunity to work with all faculty and be involved with the more complex neurosurgery problems. During this time the resident also assumes a more direct role in decision-making at the outpatient level with every patient on the Chairman’s and Vice Chairman’s service and has the ability to directly follow these patients in the hospital and in the postoperative clinic. During this year the resident is again focused on continuity of patient care with the resident participating in preoperative and postoperative assessment and on development of operative techniques with increased responsibility in the operating room.