Surgery Residency Program

Mission Statement

The Grand Stand Medical Center General Surgery Residency Program’s mission is to develop the next generation of physicians and physician leaders. As a part of HCA Healthcare, we are driven by a single mission: Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life.

This program is designed to offer residents a rewarding, educational environment where residents are provided individualized learning opportunities by faculty and staff who support and sustain one another throughout quality care delivery. Our faculty are committed to ensuring the residents' clinical experience and educational needs are fulfilled while expanding residents’ perspectives to be inclusive of cultures, values, and ideals.

Program Overview

The General Surgery Residency Program at Grand Strand Medical Center is a ACGME accredited, five-year program for 15 categorial positions and four preliminary positions.

The aim of this program is to provide fully trained, skillful, competent general surgeons for the communities they will serve. The learning environment extends across all aspects of the specialty: elective to emergency surgery, open to laparoscopic to robotic surgery, and non-operative to operative care to surgical critical care.

Research and quality improvement opportunities are abundant. We have corporate research support as well as two hospital-based full-time PhDs to assist with IRB applications, data management, manuscript development, and submissions for publication. The Resident Quality Council works on projects of interest across all GME programs.

Program Details

Our program is mission-driven to teach residents to be outstanding clinicians. We have a high volume and high acuity level of the surgical care we provide to patients. Residents get real world experience on each rotation. They are the primary focus of education and have no procedure opposition with fellows. Residents learn from dedicated and expert faculty. They experience inpatient and outpatient-based services and operate in a state-of-the-art hospital facility and nearby surgery center. Residents learn from employed physicians and develop private practice experience through our general surgery rotations. We are one of the best programs in the region for teaching residents how to be industrious, proficient surgeons.

General Surgery Residents also train at the Grand Strand Health Education and Simulation Center. It is accredited through the Society of Simulation in Healthcare, the most recognized accreditation for Simulation today. We have 24/7 access to Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) and Fundamentals of Endoscopic Surgery (FES) trainers. In addition, Grand Strand offers skills training in an immersive virtual environment using dedicated simulation models overseen by our GME simulation lab coordinator. We also have da Vinci Skills Simulator console available in our lab for surgical residents use.

We have dedicated didactic time for 4 hours per week in total. We use this time to follow curriculum on topics relevant to surgical practices and specifically for preparation for board certification. Our program maintains a high first-time board pass rate.

Our graduates are well prepared to start fellowship after training and are often reflected as outstanding clinicians who are well along the learning curve to becoming surgical specialists. They are extremely well suited to enter practice directly after training as well. Our residents have recently matched into: Vascular surgery, plastic surgery, minimally invasive and bariatric surgery, hepatobiliary surgery, and surgical critical care.

We currently offer:

• SimMan Essential, a full-bodied high fidelity wireless patient simulator for all simulated clinical experience
• Simulaid, a mid-fidelity full-bodied Patient Simulator
• Low fidelity, full-bodied Trauma Manikin
• Various part-task trainers for procedures skills training
• FLS Surgical Simulator
• da Vinci Skills Simulator

Example of Simulation Cases:

• ACLS mock codes
• Airway management
• Asepsis and instrument identification
• Basic laparoscopy skills
• Central line insertion and arterial lines
• Chest tube and thoracentesis
• Knot tying
• Laparoscopy skills
• Suturing
• Urethral and suprapubic catheterization
• Team-based training
• Trauma simulations

All cases are subject to change from time to time.

Conference Schedule

Every morning, residents have pre-rounds followed by morning sign-out of new patients admitted the previous day. Sign out is facilitated by attending surgeons on our emergency surgery service.

Each Tuesday morning, there are 3 hours of didactics with resident and attending participation. This protected education time includes curriculum that utilizes resources from SCORE, frequent low-stakes knowledge evaluations and dedicated structured simulation center time.

On Wednesday we have departmental Morbidity and Mortality conference.

Additional monthly conferences include journal clubs and grand rounds.

Salary & Benefits Information

These amounts are subject to taxation.

Benefits

Benefits include, but are not limited to:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Short-term disability
• Long-term disability
• Life insurance
• Flexible spending accounts for medical, child, elder care
• CorePlus voluntary benefits
• HCA Healthcare 401 (k) plan
• Employee assistance program (EAP)
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Work cell phone to use during residency training
• Work laptop to use during residency training
• On-call meal stipend of $950 paid out in two payments

FAQs