Neurosurgery Residency
Your residency experience in Neurosurgery will be filled with daunting challenges and inspiring opportunities over your future years of training. Neurosurgery will test your intellectual and technical skills, your dedication to high achievement, your physical stamina, your character and your humanity like no other field of Medicine. As you cross the threshold into Neurosurgery residency, you will encounter the jewel of medical specialties that is charged with the advancing the treatment of patients with disorders of the brain and spine. Neuromedicine disorders represent the major health and economic challenge of the 21st century and the leadership provided by your generation of Neurosurgeons will be essential to progress in this field.
It is the responsibility and privilege of our clinical and scientific faculty to help you become an outstanding neurosurgeon; to enrich your technical skills, clinical judgment and ethical sensibilities as you care for patients with life threatening nervous system illnesses; and to challenge your intellect at the scientific frontiers of Neuromedicine.
Over the years of my stewardship of this Department I have emphasized the recruitment of outstanding scientific and clinical faculty. This effort has been rewarded with annual top 10 rankings in NIH funding and a growth in case volume from 1000 operative cases in 2002 to over 3000 operative cases this past year. Our resident complement has expanded to two per year, we have expanded the depth and breadth of our clinical rotations and we have secured an NIH training grant to promote resident involvement in translational research. Our Department has assumed the leadership of Neurosurgery in all health systems in Rochester, manages 9 regional outreach clinics and is leading regional efforts to standardize and improve the care of patients with Neurosurgical disorders.
No listing of Departmental milestones eclipses our commitment to resident education. It is our calling to educate talented residents to become the leaders of clinical and investigative neurosurgery who will shape the future of Neuromedicine. It is this calling that has animated our Departmental growth. Residents are the lifeblood of Neurosurgery’s future and the intimate tutorial experience of training young residents inspires and invigorates our entire clinical and scientific faculty.
We believe that the unique educational environment we have created will provide the best possible training for our resident trainees while also providing neurosurgical care of the highest quality for the entire Rochester region.
I know this is a very exciting time for you as your carefully consider where you will spend the next and most exciting phase of your professional training. We would be delighted to help you explore your interest in Neurosurgery training at the University of Rochester.
Please feel free to contact our Residency Administrator, Melanie Zandvoort, with any questions you might have.
Sincerely,
Webster H. Pilcher, MD, PhD
Frank P. Smith Professor and Chair
