Orthopaedic Surgery

Northwestern University’s five-year orthopaedic surgery residency program is conducted at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, and Jesse Brown VA Medical Center (formerly VA Chicago Health Care System). These hospitals have a total of 202 orthopaedic beds and 8,200 annual orthopaedic admissions. This variety of private, public, and VA hospitals leads to a great diversity of clinical problems and allows considerable flexibility for individual rotations and graduated patient responsibility. More than 75 active orthopaedic faculty members direct the residency program’s clinical and educational activities.

A unique strength of Northwestern's residency program is that the attending staff members are, for the most part, one-hospital orthopaedists, and, consequently, devote most of their professional time to the inpatient and outpatient activities of their specific hospital. This allows residents and staff members to have daily contact. Currently 12 orthopaedic staff members are salaried, and about 68 contribute their services. These faculty members have a wide range of teaching, research, and clinical interests.

Residents in the Northwestern program are offered preparation rich in clinical variety, flexibility, individualization, and responsibility. Residents completing this program demonstrate characteristics of intellect and attitude that are required of competent clinical orthopaedists, and some acquire special clinical or research skills. Department faculty members are dedicated to educational, clinical, and scholarly excellence and seek like-minded resident applicants.

Incoming residents customarily spend the first year in a core program that includes rotations such as anesthesiology, emergency medicine, general surgery, neurological surgery, and plastic surgery. The typical residency program for recently graduated students lasts a minimum of five years. The American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery requires satisfactory completion of five years of approved graduate education for eligibility to sit for board examinations.

The last four years are divided into a year of adult trauma and reconstructive orthopaedic surgery; a year of pediatric orthopaedic surgery in a setting that provides unusual as well as common problems, including mild birth anomalies, fractures, infections, and the clinical pediatric problems ordinarily managed by a practicing orthopaedist; a year of adult and pediatric trauma and reconstructive orthopaedic surgery at a nonuniversity hospital; and chief resident responsibility and/or subspecialty experience.

As well as learning general orthopaedic surgery, residents engage in a balanced clinical experience in the specialty areas of sports medicine, total joints, hands, foot and ankle, and spine. The spine experience includes time in the spinal cord injury unit, which serves an area with a population of 20 million people.

The residents participate in courses offered by the University of Chicago and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons as well as continuing education in fracture management. In addition to clinical conferences held regularly at each hospital, residents are involved in a basic science program that is integrated throughout the residency.

Residents who undertake research activities are encouraged to concentrate on areas as diverse as diseases of the spinal column, musculoskeletal pathology, biomechanical and bioelectric aspects of fractures and their repair, and the development of improved total joint implants and biological adhesives. Senior residents must prepare and present a scientific paper for Resident Alumni Thesis Day, held every spring.

The Residency Acceptance and Review Committee screens all applicants to the orthopaedic program. After screening, applicants may be asked to interview at Northwestern. At the interview, applicants meet with the department chair and members of the residency program and interview with members of each affiliated institution.

Nine residents are selected each year through the National Resident Matching Program

Michael F. Schafer, MD
Edwin W. Ryerson Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery
Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

John F. Sarwark, MD
Children's Memorial Hospital

Mark Gonzalez, MD
John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County

Clayton A. Peimer, MD
Evanston Northwestern Healthcare

Michael F. Schafer, MD
Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Nasim A. Rana, MD
Jesse Brown VA Medical Center

Andrew D. Bunta, MD
Vice Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

George A. Sisson Jr., MD
Residency Program Education Director

Clare Giegerich, MD
Chair, Residency Acceptance and Review Committee

For more information, contact Residency Coordinator Joan Broholm, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, 645 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 910, Chicago, Illinois 60611, 312/503-1399, fax 312/908-8479 or visit the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Web site.

E-mail: j-broholm@northwestern.edu