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Thank you for your interest in our fellowship. The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center (STC) Orthopaedic Traumatology Fellowship Program boasts more than 30 years of experience in training orthopaedic trauma surgeons. We are proud of our tradition of excellence in education and are fortunate to have a strong alumni base of physicians who have played important roles in the development of the continued evolution of the field of orthopaedic trauma.

Our program offers several aspects that we believe are strengths...

  • Hands on Experience with a High Volume of High Energy Patients: Few centers can compare with the severity or volume of the injured patients seeking care at STC. Our orthopaedic group performs 4,000 trips to the operating room a year, a high percentage of these for polytrauma cases. Fellows have a busy operative experience with a heavy emphasis on difficult high-energy cases.
  • Emphasis on Progressive Autonomy: We pride ourselves on producing graduates who are clinically ready to hit the ground running. This is accomplished by a long tradition at our center of allowing fellows more and more autonomy throughout the year. Many surgical educators claim to implement this concept, but we believe this is an area of particular strength at our Center.
  • Strong Upper Extremity Experience: STC fellows truly operate on all extremities and the pelvis. There are no competing hand, foot and ankle, shoulder, or other fellows vying for cases. We offer a particularly strong experience in fractures of the upper extremity along with pelvis and lower extremity experience.
  • Dedicated Clinical Faculty: Our faculty include a large number of high-volume, experienced clinicians who have dedicated a substantial portion of their lives to the education of our fellows. Our faculty physicians are at the heart of our success, and we have been fortunate to have a very stable base of clinical educators.
  • Strong Didactic Program: Our didactic program involves teaching conferences 5 days a week. The goal of the indication conference is to review every case performed. Our curriculum of "chalk talks" and more traditional lectures is augmented by a curriculum of 10 cadaver dissection sessions and six surgical skills labs. A ring fixator course is provided for the fellows each year. Our didactic program improves the fellows' knowledge of issues in clinical practice and offers an opportunity to obtain skills in running cadaver sessions, sawbones labs, chalk talks, and the teaching of residents in the operating room. Fellows meet with faculty after teaching sessions to discuss the educational process with a goal to improve the fellows' educational skills.
  • Targeted Research Program: Our research program is very structured and begins by the fellow choosing from a list of more than 15 Internal Review Board (IRB)-ready projects. Fellows present to the faculty as if attempting to obtain grant funding. Projects are typically completed by February 1 for submission to the Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA). Skills gained during the project vary by the needs of the applicants but include the ability to quickly determine the feasibility of a study ("fail fast") and exposure to a large successful clinical research group in action.

We are proud of the current state of our fellowship but are always striving to make improvements. We believe it is this attitude that has helped us to improve upon the strong tradition that has been passed down to us by the faculty who came before us and will allow us to continue to help produce the next generation of leaders in orthopaedic trauma surgery.

Thank you again for your interest in our fellowship,

  • Robert V. O'Toole, MD
  • W. Andrew Eglseder, MD
  • Raymond A. Pensy, MD
  • Jason W. Nascone, MD
  • Jean-Claude D'Alleyrand, MD
  • Andrew N. Pollak, MD
  • Marcus F. Sciadini, MD
  • Gerard Slobogean, MD
  • Christopher T. LeBrun, MD

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