General Surgery Residency Program

Learn About Our General Surgery Residency

Length of Training: 5 years
Categorical Positions: 4
Preliminary Positions: 2

The Creighton University Surgical Residency Program emphasizes the clinical and investigative foundations of surgery.

The Program

The progressive growth of our training program enables exposure to a broad patient population base from many socio-economic backgrounds, as well as a wide diversity in training sites.

These offer perspective from academic, community, and private practice focus profiles.

Applicant Process

Current Residents

Message From the Program Director

Program Goals

Our goal is to provide a comprehensive surgical education incorporating diverse operative experiences, structured didactic sessions, and mentoring by internationally acclaimed faculty.

Residents also benefit from Creighton’s Professional Engagement and Resident Leadership Skills (PEARLS) program, which provides the tools to become an excellent leader in the operating room.

In addition, the clinical experiences add immeasurably to a resident’s medical knowledge, diagnostic ability, and surgical confidence.

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Preparing Tomorrow’s Surgical Leaders Today

In Creighton’s General Surgery Residency Program, chief residents receive training that will help them become exceptional leaders. The Creighton Surgery Professional Engagement and Resident Leadership Skills (PEARLS) program enables the chief residents to build leadership skills with specially selected leadership training sessions.

Our chief residents meet every other month with Laurie Baedke, an exceptional leader from the Heider College of Business, and learn about essentials in leadership. Topics include:

Leading Self: Leveraging Self Awareness for Increased Career Performance and Engagement

This dynamic session examines research on strengths-based leadership and the connection between talent and workplace performance and engagement. Participants will learn about their natural talents and how to turn those talents into strengths, while also learning how to recognize talents in others and utilize them for the success of the team.

Leading Others: Bolstering Your Emotional Intelligence for More Effective Leadership

Emotional intelligence is essential for physicians and leaders attempting to cope with an increasingly complex and fast-paced world. But what is emotional intelligence? How does it apply to healthcare? And how do we use it to improve performance? This lecture focuses on a large body of scientific work that has been done on emotional intelligence.

Mentor, Coach, Lead to Peak Professional Performance

This session guides participants through didactic and interactive learnings that facilitate their effective engagement as mentors, coaches and leaders, and reinforces the importance of personally investing in being well mentored, coached, led and developed by others.

Resilient Leadership: The Role of Well-Being in Individual and Organizational Performance

The demands of healthcare leadership and the prevalence of burnout in our industry are a compelling call to action for leaders to examine the research around resilience and well-being and consider the habits that can drive performance.

Developing and Executing Your Personal Strategic Plan: Mission, Vision, Goals, Strategy, Tactics

Action and accountability are what separate the doers from the dreamers. In this candid and practical session, we’ll take a page from the playbook of high-performing organizations, reviewing the components of an effective strategic plan—mission, vision, values, goals and behaviors. Along the way, we’ll consider research on the topics of purpose, wellbeing and goal setting. Participants will walk away with a road map to effectively execute that plan on their journey to personal and professional success.

Beyond receiving some of the best and most compassionate surgical training in the country, Creighton General Surgery chief residents also focus on holistic development and long-term success in the practice and leadership of healthcare.

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Hear From Our Residents

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I wanted to be ready to go straight into practice right out of residency, feeling confident in my training. Here we all graduate with tremendous amounts of operating room experience that begins from day one of residency.

— Sebastian Lane, MD

Mission, Aims and Values

Mission Statement

The General Surgery Residency at CHI-Health Creighton University Medical Center is a hybrid program; we strive to create 21st century surgeons who embrace the best of both the academic and the community settings and who then go on to provide elite surgical patient-centered care to those in need.

Aims

Promote individual development in the context of the team dynamic of modern surgical care.
Maintain a respectful workplace that residents and faculty are proud to call their own.
Offer residents diverse faculty and hospital exposure with an excellent case load to maximize learning.
Provide an environment of investigative inquiry leading to involvement in surgical advancement.
Teach our trainees to become dedicated to the betterment of others so they may truly lead in community or academic centers.
Produce surgeons who can go immediately into general surgery practice upon graduation or effectively compete for highly sought after fellowship positions.

Values

Selflessness
Collegiality
Reliability
Teamwork
Diversity
Self-improvement
Accountability

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Applying for the General Surgery Residency

Message From the General Surgery Program Director

General surgery training at Creighton is outstanding as there is no competition for cases from fellows. Creighton’s GME office truly cares about the residents and supports them 100%. I am thankful every day that I am at Creighton!

— Andy W. Yang, MD, PhD, MBA

Robotic Surgery Boot Camp - A Resident Opportunity

The Robotic Surgery boot camp is designed to provide all Creighton surgical (general surgery, urology, GYN and other surgical disciplines) residents with an integrated approach of computer-based learning modules and hands-on training.

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The curriculum provides all residents with basic knowledge of robotically assisted laparoscopy, its instrumentation, system components, and troubleshooting techniques through a computer-based testing.

It also provides residents with a dry lab to familiarize themselves with the components and instrumentation of the robotic operating system and its uses.

Boot Camp Activities

The boot camp covers such subjects depending up on resident level of training:

Boot Camp levels
- Junior level (1st and 2 yr)
- Senior (Third year and after)
Port Placement & Docking
Patient-side Assisting
Emergency Procedures
Energy Application & Advanced Instrumentation
Suturing with the da Vinci System
Emergency Procedures

Individual departments also have periodic robotic skills sessions.

General Surgery:

General surgery department arranges periodic skills session. This will be faculty led supervised activities with small group robotic practice sessions.

The Skills session includes