Our fellowship program places high value on protected time for education. Friday mornings are dedicated to numerous departmental and section meetings, and departmental grand rounds and morbidity and mortality conferences allow education from our numerous subspecialties.
Conferences specific to URPS include the following:
URPS faculty and fellows, residents, and medical students on service meet weekly to discuss surgical cases for the following week. Pre-operative evaluations and operative considerations are discussed for each case and fellows are expected to discuss peer-reviewed literature relevant to each case. This affords an opportunity to not only review seminal studies in our field, but also to keep abreast of current advances. On a monthly basis, fellows engage in an URPS-specific M &M to ensure education in quality improvement and patient care.
The entire URPS team assembles weekly to discuss new research ideas and review ongoing sectional research projects. This time is intended to ensure the logistics of each study are appropriate but also to discuss new concepts and study proposals. We also spend time on learning study design, implementation, recruitment and retention strategies, data collection and management, data analysis and dissemination, biostatistics, and ethics of human subject research.
This conference is dedicated solely to fellow teaching. Within this framework we have lectures, journal clubs, and round-table discussions. Topics are specific to URPS.