Preliminary Residents
All of our preliminary residents are an important part of our program and are treated as equals in the residency program.
Designated preliminary residents who have matched into a subspecialty area are given rotations required by their future programs in consultation with that Program Director. Most of our designated preliminary residents match into the following subspecialty areas at UW (therefore a separate application is not required): Neurosurgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Otolaryngology, Plastic Surgery, and Urology. However, we are very pleased to train designated preliminary residents in these areas who have matched elsewhere. In the past few years our designated preliminary program has been very popular with residents matching into Anesthesiology and Radiology. We believe that the popularity of our program for these residents resides in our excellent training in general surgery combined with the espirit d’corp in our program and our commitment to match future specialty interest with R1 rotations. We desire to maximize the educational experience for each individual resident – whether preliminary or categorical.
We also have 14 spots for non-designated preliminary (NDP) positions in our program. We have both 1-year (NDP-1) and 2-year (NDP-2) positions available. Depending on future interests, ERAS ranking for the NDP-1 versus NDP-2 positions should be made after consulting with our Program Director, Dr. Karen Horvath, at the time of your interview. About half of our NDP residents stay in general surgery. Because of our strong national reputation for excellent training, we have a near 100% categorical placement rate for our NDP residents and the program works hard to maintain this outstanding record and help each NDP resident. Past residents have obtained categorical positions in the following specialties where they have been very successful: general surgery, anesthesiology, orthopedic surgery, radiology, otolaryngology, urology, nuclear medicine, emergency medicine, radiation oncology, dermatology, pathology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and preventive medicine.
updated 9/09