Department of Orthopaedics

Trauma

Open to Brown Residency program graduates, the Sixth-Year Trauma Fellowship ensures that trainees become skillful, experienced surgeons.

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Trauma

Open to Brown Residency program graduates, the Sixth-Year Trauma Fellowship ensures that trainees become skillful, experienced surgeons.

The final year of the Brown University Orthopaedic Residency Program ensures that our graduates become skillful, experienced surgeons before they leave Brown. After completing their Chief Resident year (PGY5), our trainees spend another year at Rhode Island Hospital as Orthopaedic Trauma Fellows. This year is divided between an extensive exposure to the evaluation and management of musculoskeletal injuries and allows time for clinical and laboratory research. The projects typically are expansions of projects begun during the residency years. This fellowship is not open to applicants from outside of Brown.

Clinically, Brown's Trauma Fellows function as attending surgeons. They have independent surgical privileges, with commensurate responsibilities for patient care. Consultation and support from the senior faculty are readily available, since a senior faculty member is always on-call with the Trauma Fellow.

The Trauma Fellowship is directed by Rhode Island Hospital's Surgeon-in-Charge of Orthopaedic Trauma, Roman Hayda MD. There are weekly trauma fellow meetings, trauma service patient review conference, and frequent ad hoc case discussions to address patient management, pre-operative planning and the weekly resident trauma teaching conferences all provide ample opportunity for our Trauma Fellows to learn as much as possible from their rich clinical experience.

The Orthopaedic Trauma Fellowship is only available to Brown Orthopaedic Residency program graduates. Salary & benefits are competitive with the typical PG6 fellowships, with time off and generous support of travel for presentations, as well as relevant educational programs. Two weeks of vacation time is allotted during the fellowship year.

Faculty

Trauma Fellowship Faculty

Program Details

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KUQADLLhw1g

Trauma Fellowship

 

After completing their Chief Resident year (PGY5), our trainees spend another year at Rhode Island Hospital as Orthopaedic Trauma Fellows.

Rhode Island Hospital is the Level I Trauma Center for Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Serving a regional population of 1.3 million, we receive about 2500 trauma patients per year, both directly from EMS, and as referrals from the region's other hospitals. We work closely with the General Surgery Trauma Service, with consultation and support from Plastic - Reconstructive Surgery, Neurosurgery, and other specialties as appropriate. There is ample exposure to routine fracture care, as well as, to complex orthopaedic trauma and post-traumatic reconstruction - articular fractures, multiple fractures, osteoporotic fractures, pelvic and acetabular injuries, as well as multiply-injured patients. Experience will also be gained with evaluating and treating non-unions, malunions, post-traumatic infections, and with rehabilitation issues. The Trauma Fellows have access to senior faculty in all subspecialties for consultation and assistance. As their experience broadens, they take on progressively more challenging cases with increasing independence, but with the knowledge and security that available support provides.

The Trauma Fellows maintain a private practice office in which they provide continuing care for the patients they initially treat in the hospital. Faculty and staff assist them in learning the basic principles and practices of running a collaborative orthopaedic surgical practice. By the end of their fellowship, Brown's trauma fellows are comfortable and experienced in leading a surgical team on their own. Their established independent surgical expertise makes our graduates unique among the graduates of North American Orthopaedic training programs. Having learned to manage their own practice, they are familiar with the principles and practices of effective compliance with governmental and contractual requirements, as well as the skills required for successful practice in the medical marketplace.

Case Logs

On average, each trauma fellow will perform around 320 surgical cases (approximately 700 CPT codes) with the majority of those cases performed as the primary surgeon. There is a significant case variety from open long bone fractures to complex peri-articular fractures, acetabular cases, nonunion surgery and infection.

Current Fellows

Program Goals

Brown's Orthopaedic Trauma Fellows will become expert in the management of patients with significant skeletal injuries, in isolation and in polytrauma situations. They will be able leaders of an orthopaedic trauma team, and in teaching their skills to residents and medical students. The Trauma Fellows will develop their surgical experience and skills to a level of expertise as fully independent surgeons. They will gain sufficient research experience in a trauma-related or other orthopaedic field so that they will be able to contribute to the development of knowledge in their chosen field, and will be attractive candidates for academic orthopaedic faculty appointments.

Research

By the time they become Trauma Fellows, Brown's Orthopaedic Residents will have become significantly involved with appropriate research opportunities within our Department. Clinical research, bench research, or an appropriate combination should be well underway. During the Trauma Fellowship year, this will be brought to a conclusion that is both a significant accomplishment and a starting point for further studies.