“the only source of knowledge is experience.”
Albert Einstein
Our Facilities
The University of Chicago Medical Center is adjacent to the main campus of the University of Chicago, sharing the beauty of the historic campus along with Washington Park and the Hyde Park neighborhood. The close proximity to the University allows access to undergraduate, graduate, and medical school resources. In addition to cutting-edge technology, and state-of-the-art equipment, the storied and close-knit relationship with the University makes residents’ lives richer. Collaboration in our outpatient clinics, ambulatory surgery center, pediatric hospital, and world-renowned research laboratories means more opportunities for hands-on experience and growth. Being on the South Side of Chicago, we are able to care for one of the most underserved communities in the country - our residents will see a wider variety of cases and immediately impact their neighbors’ lives.
OUR RESIDENCY ROAD MAP
INTERNSHIP YEAR
The intern year at UChicago is meant to prepare you for the breadth of pathology and pathophysiology you will see in the ORs. New in 2023, interns will now have the choice of spending their entire intern year at their choice of UChicago or the NorthShore Hospital System in Evanston, IL. Both locations include general medicine and MICU rotations with a selection of subspecialties. The NorthShore Hospital System provides an educational cardiology rotation, which includes interventional cardiology procedures. Those that rotate with the UChicago Hyde Park Campus benefit from an ENT rotation and a month in the Cardiothoracic ICU staffed entirely by UChicago attending anesthesiologists. Both locations equip residents with the knowledge and experience to excel through the rest of residency.
CA-1 YEAR: BASICS OF ANESTHESIA
The first month of the CA-1 year is intense as residents are paired one-on-one with an attending. Over the years, residents agree that the tutorial experience at UChicago is special in building relationships with not only their attendings, but fellow classmates. CA-1 residents are excused from the OR with their class for lunch and afternoon lecutres to focus on learning the basics of anesthesia.
CA-2 YEAR
The emphasis of the CA-2 year is to build on the CA-1 foundation and continue advancing to the management of more complex patients, requiring a more detailed anesthetic plan. Residents rotate through cardiac, pediatrics, neurosurgery, vascular/thoracic, and surgical critical care, caring for some of the sickest patients in the state. CA-2 residents acquire proficiency and gain increasing autonomy in managing patients of high medical complexity.
SUBSPECIALTIES
CA-3 YEAR
Residents tailor their rotation schedule to gain specific experiences that suit their interests and career goals. The focus in this last year is on transitioning for independent practice. Residents will learn valuable administrative triaging skills while running the call team, coordinating board assignments, attending trauma activations, codes, emergency airways, and performing the most complex anesthetics in the hospital. With their elective time, senior residents can choose anything from research to Advanced Clinical Tracts where they select their own cases. Increased autonomy as part of the night call team prepares residents for their next steps as attendings.
TEAM LEADER
Areas of study
In addition to caring for the most underserved patients in the city, the University of Chicago is sought out internationally by patients who need cardiac surgery. We care for everything from minimally invasive and open valve surgeries to complex aortic repairs and heart transplants. Despite the complexity of our patients, we boast the highest survivability of heart transplants in the country. We also perform some of the most advanced robotic cardiac surgeries in the world, including Totally Endoscopic Coronary Artery Bypass surgery. We are home to world-renowned cardiac anesthesiologists, whose mentorship draws many of our residents to pursue cardiac anesthesia fellowship. Many of our graduates have joined private practice groups where they care for cardiac surgical patients without having any fellowship training, all of whom have felt adequately prepared with their experience at UChicago.
CArdiac
UChicago delivers, on average, over 3,000 parturients per year and is well-known for caring for the most high-risk parturients in Chicago. With the recent closure of Mercy Hospital, a safety-net hospital on the South Side of Chicago, our volume of high-risk parturients has increased as access to pre-natal and obstetric care has become increasingly limited in the South Side of our city. As a result, our residents benefit from placing hundreds of epidurals in medically complex mothers and managing their labor and operative courses. Our residents routinely rank this as one of their favorite rotations due to the camaraderie with their OB colleagues, the excellent didactics, and the confidence they acquire with their neuraxial skills.
ObSTETRICS
Our unique pain rotation combines two weeks of Acute Pain Service (APS) and two weeks in the outpatient Chronic Pain Clinic. The APS service focuses on assessing patients in the hospital to treat pain in a multi-modal approach using regional and neuraxial techniques. The Chronic Pain outpatient rotation is routinely praised as one of the nation’s best due to the highly interventional nature of the rotation with residents participating in the over 4,800 procedures and OR cases performed by our pain specialists each year. Attendings on this rotation are experts in pain management, serving as research mentors to many of our residents. CA-3’s also have the opportunity to further develop their regional experience by doing an optional rotation at NorthShore Skokie’s orthopedic surgery center.
REGIONAL + PAIN
The residents at the University of Chicago benefit from access to Comer Children’s Hospital, the only free-standing pediatric Level 1 trauma center on the South Side of Chicago. Comer houses 213 inpatients where our residents attend pediatric traumas, staff emergent cases in the operating room, and provide regional and neuraxial blocks to our pediatric patients. The PICU and Level III NICU care for some of the most complex children’s cases in the state, allowing our residents to handle anything from bread-and-butter pediatrics to the most complex anesthetics. Inspired by the experience they gain at Comer, a large percentage of residents pursue pediatric anesthesiology fellowship training.
Pediatrics
One of UChicago’s greatest strengths as a training program is its early and diverse exposure to critical care. During intern year, residents rotate through the MICU at either NorthShore University Health System or the MICU and Cardiothoracic ICU (CTICU) at UChicago Hyde Park. In the following years, residents continue to rotate through the CTICU at UChicago, a 25-bed ICU that cares for the highest-acuity post-op cardiac patients, managing complex mechanical circulatory support. As the primary ICU of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, the emphasis is on hands-on skills including line placement, ultrasound, and ECHO. Second-year residents have the opportunity to rotate through the Surgical Intensive Care Unit that primarily cares for our trauma patients. This provides a collaborative learning environment between the trauma, anesthesia, and surgical critical care team.
critical care
The University of Chicago is one of the most well-respected research institutions in the country. CA-3’s may elect up to six months of dedicated research time. Motivated residents submit a proposal in their CA-2 year outlining their research project and intended objectives. If selected, residents are then able to complete their research projects while still taking call in the ORs, with the hope of eventual manuscript publication while keeping up their clinical skills. Past residents have gone on to continue their research as Obstetric and Critical Care Fellows.
RESEARCH
NORTHSHORE University health system
The 10+ year-long partnership between the University of Chicago and NorthShore University Health System in Evanston provides the residents with an invaluable experience in community anesthesiology. Residents in their second year rotate through neurosurgery at the Evanston campus, while residents in their third year can elect to rotate through the ambulatory surgical center at Skokie to refine block skills. The attending physicians at NorthShore are all assistant professors of anesthesiology at UChicago, however, the community-based practice environment is an opportunity for residents to experience the feel of private practice, including high-efficiency turnovers, healthy parturients, and high-volume regional anesthesia.
