About

The Orthopedic Surgery Residency is a rigorous, five-year training program that will prepare residents to be leaders in the orthopedic community. Upon completion of this program, residents will have the knowledge and skills necessary to compete for the best fellowships available in their area of interest. It will also provide them with the ability to go directly into practice as well-trained orthopedic surgeons.

The Orthopedic Surgery Residency is primarily concentrated within St. Luke’s University Health Network. The residents will be off-site is for their 4-month pediatric orthopedic surgery rotation at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and potentially with 2 self-selected elective rotations.

Experience with all Subspecialties

Residents rotate through all subspecialties during the five-year program, obtaining adequate exposure to all disciplines of orthopedic surgery. This provides a broad-based education and assists in career selection. Rotations occur in the form of preceptorships in which the residents are paired with and mentored one on one by attending physicians. Residents are given ample opportunity to be involved in both office hours and operating room procedures. In addition to this clinical training, residents participate in hands-on courses covering internal fixation, external fixation, joint reconstruction, cadaveric dissection, joint arthroscopy and saw bone model exercises. These courses are taught on the campus of St. Luke’s University Hospital – Bethlehem Campus and at the Venel Institute, a nearby cadaveric facility. The first year of training is a traditional rotating internship that includes rotations in anesthesia and radiology, trauma surgery, trauma ICU, emergency medicine, and general surgery. During the second through fifth years, the rotations are in general orthopedics, trauma orthopedics, joint reconstruction, sports medicine, spine, foot and ankle surgery, hand surgery, shoulder/elbow, oncology, and pediatric Orthopedics. The sports medicine experience includes caring for the college students at Moravian College and Lehigh University, as well as students at Easton Area High School, Freedom High School, Liberty High School, Marion Catholic High School, Notre Dame High School, Whitehall High School, and Wilson Area High School.

Increasing Surgical Responsibilities

Residents are given increasing responsibilities as their surgical skills allow. St. Luke’s and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia together treat over 12,000 surgical orthopedic cases per year. This volume ensures that residents will have the opportunity to hone their surgical skills while being exposed to a diverse caseloads.

Mentoring Medical Students

Frequently, medical students from Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine, as well as Temple’s Main Campus and other medical schools rotate on the orthopedic service. Residents are encouraged to mentor these medical students as another element to their residency training.

Full Complement of Conferences

This program offers a full complement of conferences which include indications, morbidity and mortality, research, fracture, radiology, and anatomy conferences, as well as a daily residents' reading curriculum, ACGME general competency conferences, journal clubs, orthopedic grand rounds and visiting professorships. There are also regularly scheduled lectures in basic science and in pertinent clinical topics including musculoskeletal oncology.

Well-Rounded Education for Goal-Oriented Residents

The experience in St. Luke’s Orthopedic Surgery Residency Program is intended to be a concise, self-contained educational experience that will provide a well-rounded education and the potential for orthopedic residents to reach their personal goals for the future. This includes those who want to enter general practice as well as individuals who wish to focus on a subspecialty and a fellowship. There is ample opportunity for clinical research and each resident will be required to complete at least one publication during the five-year program. For those residents who are interested, there is also the potential to be involved in basic science research and biomechanical research with our Lehigh University collaboration.

Rotation Locations

Residents will spend time at the following campuses: Bethlehem, Allentown, Anderson, Upper Bucks, Easton, and Warren. Surgical experiences will take part in the above campuses as well as in our new, state of the art, Orthopaedic Hospital.

Call Responsibilities

Call will consist of covering adult and pediatric orthopaedic conditions, as well as hand injuries at the Bethlehem Campus. All junior level call is home call with senior and attending backup. An in-house call room is provided. Call at CHOP is in house.