General Surgery Residency Program

The clinical curriculum is designed to ensure our residents are prepared for the breadth of pathologies and problems they will encounter in surgical practice. From day one, we expect our residents to be the primary provider of their patients – making rounds, seeing patients in clinic, performing procedures and operations, and discussing management decisions. The Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a safety net hospital for the citizens of Los Angeles County and every single resident and faculty member take this responsibility seriously. We ensure our patients get evidence based, cutting edge care, but many times the face of this care will be our residents.

Our residency affiliates with several off-site institutions so that the residents are exposed to different practice patterns and pathologies. Rotating at local Kaiser affiliates is an outstanding way our residents to experience efficient, high-volume surgical practices in a community setting. The City of Hope rotation for surgical oncology and endocrine rotation at UCLA provide pivotal quaternary experiences.

Overall, we still believe in a broad-based approach to surgical training, which means our senior residents do cardiothoracic surgery and vascular surgery rotations. We are also highly committed to developing each resident to become their best self, so flexibility in rotations at the more senior levels is considered on a case-by-case basis. The construct of the residency years is detailed below: