Thank you for your interest in the General Surgery Residency Program at MedStar Georgetown/Washington Hospital Center. We are a fully accredited program that is approved for 10 spots in the MATCH. We are based in Washington DC at two busy, academic hospitals and I am pleased to share why this is one of the best General Surgery training programs in the country.
Our program is resident centered, and we strive to provide an unparalleled experience to develop surgical and leadership skills. We work with our residents to identify their career goals and can help them achieve this through individualized paths.
Our Flexibility in Training (FiT) program is American Board of Surgery and ACGME approved program that allows our residents the opportunity to spend time in subspecialty rotations that would otherwise not count towards chief level rotations. This allows our residents to obtain advanced operative experience in plastic and reconstructive surgery, cardiac surgery, transplant and hepatobiliary surgery and global surgical experience. This experience sets our graduates on the path towards starting practice or fellowship hitting the ground running, it is an experience that is sought after by competitive fellowships.
Our rotations are mainly at two academic centers offering complementary experience: MedStar Georgetown University Hospital offers high end experience abdominal transplant surgery including liver, kidney, pancreas, and small bowel transplants. It also has a robust surgical oncology experience, plastic and reconstructive surgery, thoracic surgery, and robotic surgery. The MedStar Washington Hospital Center being the major acute care access hospital in the city offers rotations through the busiest trauma center in the area, the only Burn center in DC and the busiest cardiac surgery, vascular surgery, and SICU center in our area. It also has a robust minimally invasive service that covers advanced elective cases and Robotic surgery on the ACS service. Our residents complement their experience at these two quaternary referral centers by also rotating at busy community hospitals in both Maryland and Virginia. These offerings allow our residents to finish with easily 1100 cases by the time of graduation.
Even though dedicated research time is not mandatory, all our residents are involved in research and are very productive. A good number of them do make the choice of taking some dedicated time for research during their residency. There are multiple funded opportunities in the MedStar system offering research in Burn/wound care, transplant immunology, oncology and cardiac surgery. Also, our residents have traditionally been able to secure competitive research positions nationally, including at the NIH locally.
With the large number of residents and multiple institutions within our system, we are able to accommodate senior requests for electives and base our rotations on the need of the residents. This continuous assessment is done through our weekly meeting with the chief residents who are core members of our Program Evaluation Committee, along our PD, APDs and Department Chair and our office of surgical education. All decisions affecting our residency are made with the input of our chief residents who are encouraged to participate as long term stakeholders while developing leadership skills.
With all the above strengths, what makes our residency wonderful are the residents, their dedication to our patients and to each other. Achieving great goals in a surgical career takes a lot of hard work, dedication, sacrifice, supportive environment, and dedicated mentors. I believe that our programs has all the requirements for individuals to excel.
Sincerely,
Chadi Abouassaly, MD
Program Director