Surgery

The Department of Surgery participates in educational programs during all four years of the undergraduate curriculum. During the first and second years, instruction in surgery provides students with an introduction to the scope of surgery in the management of human disease, and the role of surgery in the treatment of pathology within the various systems of the body.

The department participates in the physical diagnosis course emphasizing the development of skills in preparing legible, accurate histories and physical examinations with special emphasis on surgical pathology.

The major departmental input in the undergraduate curriculum is the third-year surgical clerkship. Each student is assigned to a Tufts affiliated teaching hospital surgical services for a 12-week period. The clerkship is designed to educate all medical students in the principles of surgery and to provide each student with a first hand bedside, ambulatory clinic, and operating room experience with surgical patients. Emphasis is placed on the understanding of disease processes as they relate to basic science principles, as well as on the diagnosis, operative treatment, postoperative management, and rehabilitation of surgical patients. Most of the assigned time is devoted to the broad field of general surgery with the remaining time spent on the specialty services such as anesthesia, orthopaedic surgery, otolaryngology, and urology.

Individual students are assigned to surgical teams that include faculty members, residents, and interns. They are responsible for recording complete histories and physical examinations in the hospital charts on a specified number of assigned patients. They are expected to join the surgical team at daily bedside rounds and to present new patients for discussion of workup plan and treatment. They participate in the operating room and share responsibility for postoperative care. Assignments to ambulatory clinics are included in the student's schedule.

Small group instruction is scheduled on a daily basis with senior faculty in the form of seminars and case studies. This instruction continues the program of problem-based learning to which students have been introduced in the pre-clinical years. In addition, students are expected to attend the regularly scheduled departmental conferences and teaching rounds that are held in each hospital.

In the fourth year 28 electives in surgery and the surgical subspecialties are offered by the surgical faculty from the various affiliated teaching hospitals.

There are numerous opportunities for post graduate surgical education in the major Tufts affiliated hospitals. Four of these hospitals sponsor accredited residencies in general surgery. Residencies are also offered in thoracic surgery, plastic surgery, vascular surgery, colon and rectal surgery and pediatric surgery.