Rashard Dacus-SOM
Transcription 

My name is Rashard Dacus and IÕm an associate professor here at the University of Virginia in the department of orthopedic surgery. When it comes to things like surgery, education is two-fold. ItÕs the clinical knowledge and the knowledge of being able to treat patients but also the operative experience and the ability to be able to complete operative surgery in a way thatÕs safe and efficient. We have a lot of training where itÕs graduated autonomy where in the beginning itÕs a lot of watching and paying attention and then as you go forward, more interaction. We value the fact that our facility are present at all cases and are heavily involved in all the care of all our patients, while at the same time being able to facilitate education of the new surgeons-to-be. All of our facility here are really dedicated to teaching and we have so much knowledge to impart and we want people to take that and take advantage of that. We allow them to interview patients and get a good idea of what the clinical aspect of our department is. We also have them involved in surgery from the standpoint of being assistants. We want them to be knowledgeable in things like anatomy. We also want them to be knowledgeable on the treatment aspects of what we do for patients. Whether itÕs surgical or non-surgical. So a lot of what we look for in potential residents and fellows is really the openness to learning. We do two week rotations on our service, and we think at the end of those two weeks we have them do a presentation as well to kind of show us some of the things that theyÕve learned. We try and foster those relationships after theyÕve finished our rotation and a lot of times we mentor students from first through fourth year - particularly ones that are interested in orthopedic surgery. We try and engage them in things like research as well. So we have a lot of students who are working with our department throughout the year on things like research, book chapterÕs, etcetera. I think some of the things that set us apart from other programs are the consistency of our didactic training, as well as our state of the art fresh tissue lab where weÕre able to do simulated surgery on cadavers using real instruments in real time with X-ray and training. I think those are things that our program has that a lot of programs donÕt.