Welcome to Harborview Medical Center’s Plastic Surgery Program
We host a diverse set of rotating residents on our intern plastic surgery services at UW Medicine Harborview Medical Center.
Residents from Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery, Otolaryngology and General Surgery typically rotate on the Gold service as it meshes well with their home department experiences. Residents from Orthopedic and other departments rotate on the Purple service for similar reasons.
Each service line maximizes the interaction and relevance to each department’s residents regarding how the services work together as they progress throughout their residency program.
Of the two services there is a majority of Purple senior plastic surgery residents as this is the service with the highest volume and educational exposure.
There are plenty of opportunities to advance each resident’s knowledge base and thus improve relations between the different service lines. We have already experienced some of these efficiencies and hope to maximize this effect further.
MISSION
The Plastic Surgery Residency at the University of Washington, Harborview Medical Center, aims to train physicians in every aspect of plastic surgery practice.
As a result of this directive, the program produces independent, safe, effective, and conscientious plastic surgeons that are credits to their communities, the specialty, and the University of Washington.
INTRODUCTION
The Gold service is a high volume surgical experience based at the only Level I trauma hospital in a four-state region. Many hand and craniofacial injuries around this region are quite complex, and they are therefore funneled into the Harborview Gold system.
The service is staffed by 1 Intern and 2 senior plastic surgery residents (PSR’s), one of whom is a PGy-4, and the other is a plastic surgery chief resident PGY-6. The general structure of the service is hand/microsurgery on Monday and Tuesday, burn reconstruction Monday and Friday and craniofacial surgery the remaining days of the week.
The assignment of surgical cases is level-appropriate, however, due to the large volume of complex cases, the junior of the two residents is afforded a large exposure to complex reconstruction.
