Adult Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship

Our 1-year fellowship program offers a broad clinical experience in adult reconstructive surgery, including complex primary cases, revisions, hip preservation surgery, periprosthetic fractures, infections and exposure to enabling technologies. The schedule is divided into two blocks, organized by faculty with complementary clinical schedules, through which the fellows rotate every two months during the year. One block is a "clinic" block in which the fellows will have an independent painful total joint clinic once a week where they evaluate and work-up patients with complex clinical problems.  The other block is a "research" block in which the fellows have one full day of protected research time each week to work on their research project and any other academic responsibilities. This schedule allows early and consistent exposure to each faculty member throughout the fellowship, maximizing the educational experience, and ensures protected time for research and graduated autonomy. 

Typical Weekly Schedule

The typical weekly clinical schedule for each fellow includes four days in the OR, and either a full day in clinic vs a full day of protected research time depending on the assigned rotation. However, this can be adjusted as necessary depending on fellow preferences or needs. For fellows with clinical interest, exposure to orthopaedic trauma and total shoulder cases are available if desired.

There may be occasions where weekend coverage is required by the fellows for rounding on the inpatient service or treating urgent cases.  Since we have multiple advanced care providers (PAs and NPs) on the service, there is built-in flexibility to the schedule to accommodate fellow participation in more interesting cases and to offload non-educational patient care needs.  We make every effort to limit weekend patient care responsibilities for each fellow to no more than once per month.

Didactic Schedule

The didactic schedule includes weekly Wednesday-morning conferences from 6:30 to 8 a.m. Our annual educational calendar is built into this block of time, which includes a monthly journal club, indications conference (interesting case reviews), peer review (M&M) conference every six weeks and topic-focused faculty lectures. The fellows are responsible for leading journal club, organizing and presenting the indications conference cases and presenting the adult reconstruction section complications at peer review. Additionally, the fellows are asked to present a case-based lecture at the end of the fellowship year centered around a topic of their choosing. Finally, a multidisciplinary total joint council meeting occurs once per month and an adult recon section research meeting occurs every other month, which the fellows are expected to attend.

Regional and National Meetings

Participation in regional or national meetings and educational courses is strongly encouraged to enhance the educational experience.  Each year, we encourage our fellows to attend the ICJR Direct Anterior Approach Hip Course, which is directed by Dr. Moskal, and the ICJR Winter Hip and Knee Course. Attending the annual AAHKS meeting is expected and supported, during which our fellowship program hosts our annual dinner to allow faculty members, former fellows and current fellows to reconnect.  Additionally, we ask that the fellows submit their research projects for presentation and attend the regional Virginia Orthopaedic Society meeting which occurs each spring. Participation in additional meetings or courses (i.e., AAOS annual meeting) is allowed based on educational merit or if presenting a research project.