General Surgery Residency Program

Thank you for your interest in the General Surgery Residency Program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center!  We are extremely proud of our institution, its mission, and the residents we train.
Harbor-UCLA is a county-funded academic medical center located in southwestern Los Angeles.  We are the second busiest Level 1 Trauma Center in the LA area and serve an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse patient population.  Faculty and residents alike are honored to “put patients first and to provide exceptional patient-centered care with the respect and compassion we would want for our loved ones regardless of ability to pay.”

The General Surgery Residency places tremendous emphasis on resident education. Our main objective is to train highly competent and compassionate surgeons.   We have a comprehensive didactic program and skills lab designed to complement a robust clinical experience.  Weekly M&M conferences, faculty- and resident-led didactic sessions, journal clubs, mock orals practice, and fully integrated laparoscopic, endoscopic, and robotic simulation curricula are just a few of the highlights.

The County hospital environment develops appropriate, graduated resident autonomy under the supervision of academic faculty.  Our residents obtain a rich and early operative experience.  Chief residents graduate with close to 1200 cases each (national average is 1050), and the expectation is that senior residents serve as teaching assistants to the junior residents. We have no operative surgical fellows, so chief residents do not compete for cases with more senior trainees. Our residents graduate with a diverse set of operative experiences, and we are proud to provide training in open, laparoscopic, endoscopic and robotic surgery. Training residents to be independent surgeons in both clinical decision making and operative technique is our goal.

The residents’ clinical experience is augmented by important affiliations with surrounding hospitals including: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (pediatric surgery), UCLA Ronald Regan Hospital (solid organ transplant and endocrine surgery), University of Southern California (burn surgery), City of Hope Medical Center (surgical oncology), and Kaiser Permanente South Bay and Baldwin Park (general surgery and minimally invasive surgery). We are fortunate to also have all major surgical subspecialties represented at Harbor-UCLA.

Harbor boasts a well-rounded, dedicated faculty of full-time academicians, each appointed by the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Every faculty member is a clinician-educator, and has chosen to work at Harbor in order to serve their community, train the next generation of surgeons, and participate in education, scholarship, and leadership.

Resident research and professional development time is an expectation between the 3rd and 4th year of training.  Residents may elect to stay at Harbor or seek research opportunities elsewhere. In recent years, we have had residents enroll at the National Cancer Institute Surgical Oncology Research Fellowship, participate in basic science research at City of Hope Cancer Institute, at UCLA Main Campus, and at the University of California, Irvine. Our research residents regularly participate in presentations at local, regional, and national meetings, and have been recognized with scholarships and awards for their work. In addition to scholarly activity, our research residents also serve on hospital committees, pursue education and quality improvement projects on campus, and remain active in the educational curriculum at Harbor.

Harbor’s combination of outstanding hands-on training and research experience has translated into great success in placing our chief residents into fellowship.  Many of our graduates have pursued fellowship training in a wide array of specialties: Pediatric Surgery, Surgical Oncology, Trauma/Critical Care, Vascular, Colorectal, MIS, Cardiothoracic, and Plastic Surgery. We also have graduates who affirm their preparedness by taking jobs in general and rural surgery. Our goal of training thoughtful, caring and compassionate surgeons transcends surgical sub-specialization, and we take great pride in our graduates’ commitment to surgery, to their patients, and to our profession.

We are so fortunate to continue to recruit exceptional and promising residents — from entering, aspiring interns to accomplished, graduating Chief Residents.  All share a strong work ethic and commitment to taking care of any patient in need.  I am so proud of our program, our department, and our hospital, and it is my honor to lead this residency.