Department of Surgery Conferences

We have developed a series of conferences that we feel best prepares residents to become the complete General Surgeon, as well as succeed on the Boards and compete competitively for Attending and Fellowship positions. Scheduled conference times are considered “protected time”. Accordingly, the operating room starts late on Mondays and there is no elective general surgery on Wednesdays, which are when we have our required conferences.

Morbidity and Mortality. Drs. Savino (Program Director) and Yelon (Associate Program Director) run the weekly M&M Conference at WMC. M&M is conducted as a primarily educational conference with structured PowerPoint presentations of selected cases and discussions with associated literature reviews. Emphasis is placed on analysis of delays in diagnosis and/or treatment, appropriateness of diagnoses and treatments, and determination of whether adverse events were preventable, possibly preventable or non-preventable. Residents have ready access to on-line literature and databases including complete use of the resources of the New York Medical College and on-line access to the “Up-to-Date” system, enabling them to prepare presentations based on the most recent evidence available in the literature. All presentations are electronically archived for later review and incorporated into resident portfolios and files.  Once a month, there is an M&M devoted solely to Trauma and Surgical Critical Care which is run by Dr Yelon.

An independent M&M Conference at St Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT, is conducted by Drs. Douglas Ross and Anthy Demestihas. Dr. Ross is a Head and Neck Surgeon, recently recruited from Yale University to be Chairman of Surgery at SVMC – Bridgeport. Dr. Demestihas is the Program Site Director at SVMC – Bridgeport.  Dr. Ross also organizes and runs the Medical/Surgical Conference and GI Tumor Board at SVMC – Bridgeport.  The Journal Club at SVMC is organized and run by Dr. Demestihas.

Basic Science. The goal of the Basic Science curriculum is to provide residents with an understanding and appreciation of the scientific foundation of the core elements of general surgery and the surgical subspecialties. Efforts are made to emphasize those topics identified as areas of weakness based on ABSITE results. This conference is designed to be highly interactive. In the past, we had assigned faculty surgeons or scientists to deliver each lecture, however, we found that resident learning and participation was less than optimal. Therefore, Senior Residents (PGY 3, 4, & 5) are assigned each week to work with a designated faculty surgeon to prepare the lecture for the upcoming week’s topic. Assigned faculty and other faculty in attendance at both sites present brief clinical case vignettes of relevance to the topic, highlighting associated anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology and pathology. They also engage a discussion following the presentation by questioning the residents about the topic in a Socratic manner. Basic Science conference is teleconferenced to St Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, where Dr. Vincent Donnelly (Chairman Emeritus at St. Vincent’s Medical Center - Bridgeport) regularly attends and moderates the conference there. Following the presentation and discussion, Basic Science concludes with individual and/or group quizzes to reinforce learning.  Below is the 2009 – 2010 Basic Science Schedule.

Resident Education Conference. This conference includes monthly sessions on Ethics, Simulation/Skills Lab, Journal Club and Formal Grand Rounds. The occasional fifth Wednesday in a month is reserved for additional special topics seminars (e.g. Fatigue and Sleep Deprivation), or for “Town Hall” meetings where we discuss the program with residents in an open forum to raise and resolve resident concerns.

• Grand Rounds – 1st Wednesday.  Grand Rounds typically consists of a lecture by an established expert. The majority of the speakers are from outside institutions; the remaining speakers are either surgical faculty from within the department or guest lecturers from other NYMC clinical departments.
• Ethics Sessions – 2nd Wednesday.  The Ethics Series was initiated after applying for and being awarded the Kamangar Ethics Training Award, which provided textbooks for our faculty, workbooks for our residents and faculty development related to teaching of Ethics. The Ethics sessions are run by our Associate Program Directors, Drs. Donald Risucci and Jay Yelon, in collaboration with Ms Maureen Eisner, a full time Ethicist and Director of Patient Experience at WMC. During these sessions, key ethical principles associated with the topic of discussion are presented to the residents. Then, scenarios from the textbook are presented and discussed interactively with the faculty and residents. Dr. Yelon and Ms. Eisner often introduce real cases for discussion and elaborate on real world applications of the core principles.
• Journal Clubs – 3rd Wednesday.  Journal Clubs are organized by Dr. Risucci, who collaborates with individual faculty surgeons to select research articles and associated literature related to Statistics and Evidence-Based Medicine. Drs. Spanknebel (Oncology), Kaul (General Surgery), Yelon (Trauma/Surgical Critical Care), Facciuto (Transplant/Hepatobiliary Surgery) and Babu (Vascular Surgery) are responsible for either organizing or assigning faculty to develop journal clubs across the core surgical specialties. The Journal Club sessions include presentation of the assigned articles by the assigned faculty surgeon and Dr. Risucci, followed by interactive discussion of clinical, statistical and ethical issues associated with the readings.
• Simulation / Skills Lab – 4th Wednesday.  SimMan simulation sessions are overseen by Dr. Yelon; Surgical Skills Labs are overseen by Dr. Maffei, in collaboration with Dr. Wolfe. Each month residents are assigned to participate in either the Skills Lab or SimMan portion. SimMan scenarios are currently under development and have only been preliminarily tested at this point. Skills Labs are currently based primarily on the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery Curriculum. Residents track their own performance on simulated laparoscopic surgical tasks with pre-set proficiency goals determined on the basis of expert performance.  Occasionally, other skills sessions are included, such as central line placement, ultrasound for acute care surgery, etc.

Other General Surgery Conferences:

Research Conference. Organized by Dr. Yelon, this conference meets weekly to discuss new and ongoing research and quality improvement projects in the Department of Surgery.  The purpose of this meeting is to encourage and assist research projects among Faculty, Residents, Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners and Medical Students.  This weekly conference has lead to many presentations at national conferences and publications in peer reviewed journals.  

Tumor Board is a multidisciplinary conference run by Dr. Marcello Facciuto (Medical Director of Hepatobiliary & Pancreatic Surgery) in collaboration with faculty from Medicine, GI, Oncology and Pathology departments. This is a multidisciplinary conference with regular attendance by multiple specialists and subspecialists.

Surgical Critical Care and Trauma Resuscitation Conference.  Dr. Yelon (Associate Program Director and Chief of Trauma, Critical Care, Acute Care Surgery and Burns) runs the Surgical Critical Care and Trauma Resuscitation conferences at WMC. These conferences review individual cases, team performance and leadership.

Vascular Surgery Conference.  The Vascular Surgery Conference is organized and run by Dr. Sateesh Babu, Chief of Vascular Surgery.

Conferences at WMC are scheduled as follows:

Conferences at SVMC Bridgeport, CT are scheduled as follows: