Education
SLU Plastic Surgery is committed to graduating independent, safe, and innovative plastic surgeons who will be leaders in their field. Training comprises the full breadth and depth of plastic surgery across multiple training environments, with an emphasis on personal, professional, and academic growth.
In addition to traditional faculty-resident teaching in the operating room and clinic, SLU Plastic Surgery features the following avenues to facilitate resident learning:
Didactic lectures are given on both core Plastic Surgery topics as well as featuring guest lectures on more unique and cutting edge topics. The educational curriculum is annually renewed, revised, and designed by the Education Committee that features junior and senior residents as well as faculty advisors.
Quarterly, SLU Plastic Surgery hosts cadaver dissections for its residents to foster practical learning of the upper extremity, lower extremity, trunk, and face. Access to cadavers are available throughout the year for individual learning per request.
Residents have the option of choosing any faculty to become their faculty mentor, often choosing multiple mentors to meet with and gain career advice from throughout residency.
By traveling to a variety of hospitals, residents have an opportunity to experience, pathology, hospital flow, and interact with faculty not just in the academic setting, but in the private practice and “privademic” landscapes.
Each month, articles from prominent Plastic Surgery and affiliate journals are selected to be discussed at Journal Club that is often hosted at a trendy restaurant for a night of food and learning.
Each Wednesday morning features a senior resident led InService review that compliments the core didactic schedule to get residents ready for the annual Inservice Exam in Late Feb/Early March.
SLU has an exclusive partnership with the Practical Anatomy and Surgical Education (PASE) lab that hosts a multitude of national and international courses, giving SLU Plastic Surgery residents access to a number of courses featuring internationally recognized faculty. Further, SLU Plastic Surgery has hosted numerous courses at this facility including the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons (ASMS) Advanced Course as well as the annual Craniofacial Surgery and Transfacial Approaches to the Skull Base course.
The American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons
Craniofacial Surgery & Transfacial Approaches to the Skull Base: A Hands-On Cadaver Workshop
Resident cosmetic clinic is supervised by a faculty member every two months to foster independent resident hands-on learning. Residents are allowed to recruit their own patients, perform a variety of injectable procedures, and recruit patients for potential surgical procedures.
- 2016: David Mathes
- 2017: Mary Beth Ezaki
- 2018: Elof Eriksson
- 2018: Maurice Nahabedian
- 2019: Jeffrey Kenkel
Residents are encouraged and supported to submit research abstracts and papers to both local and national conferences each year. Residents with accepted presentations are compensated for time and travel to accommodate their speaking opportunity. Chief residents are sent to the annual ASPS senior residents conferences, a week long course each Fall to help them prepare for the next steps in their career.
As a whole, SLU Plastic Surgery encourages a family atmosphere where residents are allowed to be themselves and grow as individuals from both a personal and professional standpoint, while continuing to demand the highest level of clinical and professional excellence.