Surgical Medical Education

The Department of Surgery at BIDMC is one of three major teaching and research entities of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Surgery. Approximately half of HMS students take their Core Clerkship in Surgery at BIDMC.

The Director of Undergraduate Education in the BIDMC Department of Surgery, Amy Evenson, MD, MPH, directs the Core Clerkship in Surgery. A transplant surgeon who is passionate about teaching, Dr. Evenson is also the Fellowship Coordinator for the BIDMC Transplant Institute. Ben James, MD, MS, Chief of the Section of Endocrine Surgery at BIDMC, serves as Associate Clerkship Director. Dr. James has been a leader in undergraduate medical education and has an active research program in endocrine surgery. Jaisa Olasky, MD, also serves as Associate Clerkship Director for our department. Dr. Olasky, who completed a fellowship at BIDMC, is advancing the use of virtual reality simulation training in surgical education. Formerly at HMS, students began their clinical training in their third year. With the introduction in 2015 of HMS’s innovative Pathway’s curriculum, students now do their core clerkship in their second year of medical school. By enabling students to gain clinical experience earlier than in the past, students have more time to develop their career plans and research interests.

During their clerkship year, HMS students spend three-month rotations in both Surgery and Medicine. They also spend six weeks in both Obstetrics/Gynecology and Pediatrics, and one month in Neurology, Radiology and Psychiatry. Two-week elective rotations are also offered in Perioperative and Fourth-Year Surgical Intensive Care.

The primary objective of the Core Clerkship in Surgery is to provide students with a thorough introduction to general surgery, regardless of their future career plans. Students learn about surgical decision-making and the scope of surgical disease and management. In addition, they learn about the importance of considering the patient as a whole person and collaborating with other medical professionals. During their surgical clerkship, students are assigned rotations so that their general surgery education is augmented by experience in Anesthesia (one-week rotation) and surgical subspecialties. Students participate in patient care in a variety of settings (office, clinic, inpatient floors and operating rooms). Students also come together for didactic sessions focused on topics in general surgery led by a faculty member who is a specialist in the topic under discussion.

Weekly didactic and lecture sessions are held for medical students in the state of the art videoconference center in the Shapiro Simulation and Skills Center. Our center has direct connectivity to each operating room within the medical center, allowing the students to observe live OR cases in real time.

The Core Clerkship in Surgery is consistently highly rated by students, who cite the high quality of the teaching and the progressive approach to surgical education. HMS has also recognized the excellence of the BIDMC Core Clerkship in Surgery by giving major teaching awards to several faculty and staff.

Surgical Bootcamp is an intense, interactive, practically based curriculum designed to prepare fourth-year medical students for surgical internship by helping students develop clinical skills in a safe, structured setting. Over a four-week period, students will engage with surgical residents, attendings, nurse practitioners and ancillary staff in a dedicated surgical environment. The curriculum will revolve around equipping students with skills to perform common operating room and emergency procedures, making sound decisions regarding peri-operative floor and ICU management, understanding surgical anatomy, and improving effective communication so they can easily transition to and excel in their first year of surgical training.

Special emphasis will be given to practice-based learning, with daily hands-on sessions including suture and knot tying drills, trauma and emergency scenarios, laparoscopy skills, and anatomy sessions. Students will be expected to take a few “mock” home pager calls in which post-operative scenarios will be presented to the students and they will be required to think and respond quickly under pressure. Upon completion of this course, students will have reviewed, significantly extended, and refined their knowledge of surgical procedures; they will gain hands-on experience with common challenges faced by surgical interns; and thereby avoid pitfalls and raise their overall confidence as they enter surgical internship.