General Surgery Residency

MUSM Surgery Clerkship

Danny Vaughn, M.D., is the Clerkship Director for the third and fourth year MUSM students. Ashley Jones, M.D., serves as Associate Clerkship Director. The junior clerkship is eight weeks in length, and receives consistently excellent to outstanding ratings. Throughout their clerkship our residents teach the medical students a multitude of clinical and basic science topics both in the OR and in scheduled didactic sessions.

Clerkship LCME

The surgical curriculum is not a static object. A curriculum evolves as each year passes. In the last eight years new procedures involving surgery surgical principles have changed the cognitive knowledge as well as the judgment algorhythms which must and do play an important part of surgical expertise and therefore, must be incorporated into the clerkship surgical curriculum. The classic example being the use of the FAST EXAM in blunt abdominal trauma as opposed to diagnostic peritoneal lavage. The use of the laparoscope involving hernia repairs, colonsectomys, and damage control surgery have now become an important part of the surgical armamentarium. Changes in surgical principles in the management of breast cancer, malignant melanoma and other surgical diseases have to be incorporated into the clerkship cognitive curriculum.

The clerkship curriculum must now include further study of imaging principles with examples, with imaging scans, mammograms, ultrasounds, CT's, all of which are now appearing in the National Board, the NBME Part II and Part III.

The undergraduate surgical curriculum cannot be confined to the third year and therefore, must be made to modify the fourth year to create a more valuable bridge from the medical school to the surgical residency with a heavy emphasis on clinical skills.

Clerkship Objectives

The achievement of the mission and objective of the clerkship in surgery is based partly on pure objective measurements as through examinations.

The Curriculum committee has mandated that the goals of the Surgical Clerkships in Macon, Savannah and Columbus will be identical.

• To initiate an exposure to the disciplines of surgery.
• To teach the surgical clerks to obtain the cognitive knowledge and clinical competencies to recognize patients need for surgical consultation.
• To prepare a differential diagnosis derived from the clinical history and physical findings.
• To identify the necessary diagnostic tools to identify the diagnosis and be able to have a preliminary plan of management.
• To socialize medical students into the best of culture of medicine such that they develop an enduring commitment to compassionate care of patients and life-long learning.

Clerkship Overview

The surgical Clerkship is an eight-week program on three clinical campuses; Macon, Savannah and Columbus. The three programs are quite separate but are identical in content.

The objective of the clerkship is to provide a broad clinical exposure in a variety of clinical arenas to teach the clinical surgical clerks the principles of surgical disease, its recognition and plans of management. The clinical settings include classroom activities, outpatient clinical patient exposure, the operating room the recovery room, the intensive care unit and the wards. It is expected that the surgical clerks will earn about the recognition of disease that a primary care physician would learn to recognize, so that the appropriate surgical consultation may be made.

The organization of the clerkship provides outpatient and inpatient exposure, intra-operative experience, post-operative diagnostic algorithm surgical decision making.

The clinical clerks are expected to log their patient encounter into One45. These will be printed by the coordinator on a weekly basis and reviewed by the director. The clerks will turn in history and physicals and/or SOAP note to be reviewed by the Clerkship Director. The Director will give feedback if the history and physicals are not written adequately. The clerks are expected to be an integral part of the surgical team to which they have been assigned, they will report to residents and follow them closely. A limited night float experience is expected during the rotation.

The clerks must attend all post-graduate conferences and attend all didactic sessions that are provided for them. The didactic sessions are taught by attending surgeons and the resident staff from the Department of Surgery. There are also didactic, interactive discussions provided by surgical specialists in the areas of otolaryngology, orthopedics, and urology.

The clerks are expected to be professional, compassionate, and altruistic with an appropriate attitude, all of which are carefully observed..