Fellow Responsibilities

The fellow’s responsibilities are to be involved in all aspects of the care in the trauma patients including preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative management. The fellow will be under the direct supervision of the orthopedic trauma faculty. When a chief resident is involved, the orthopedic fellow will be secondary to the chief resident in the management plan although their treatment plan will be reviewed with the orthopedic trauma faculty member responsible for that patient. The chief resident will run the service with the fellow acting in a support role. When the chief resident is not involved, the fellow will be expected to manage the treatment of that patient.

Assistance in Surgery

The orthopedic trauma fellow, in conjunction with the orthopedic chief resident on the trauma rotation, and in addition to a faculty member on the orthopedic trauma team will be responsible for the timing and titration and planning of all the surgical procedures on each trauma patient. The fellow is expected to have read prior to all surgical procedures in order to obtain maximum educational benefit. The fellow will have unlimited textbooks available as well as pertinent articles that will support the treatment arm and further the understanding of the patient’s condition and treatment modalities. Discussion of the surgical case with the attending preoperatively, intraoperatively and postoperatively will be a critical part of their education process.

Assistance in Clinic

The orthopedic trauma fellow will be responsible in assisting the chief resident in evaluating all patients that attend the trauma clinic. They will assist in the formulation of treatment plans much to the level of an attending surgeon but all plans will be reviewed by the orthopedic trauma faculty. Physical and radiographic examinations of each patient will be reviewed with the attending orthopedic surgeon staffing the clinic. Teaching junior level residents the physical and diagnostic skill sets will be part of the orthopedic trauma fellow’s responsibilities.

Administration

The orthopedic trauma fellow will assist the trauma attendings in the administration of the orthopedic trauma services. The attendings, particularly the director and associate director, will provide opportunity for the fellow to observe and be mentored in the organizational and administrative aspects of internal and external trauma system development.
The Residency Academic Program Manager, Program Coordinator and Department Administrative Assistant will assist the Fellowship Program Director, Co-Director and Department Chair in administering the Orthopedic Trauma Program. Other Orthopedic Surgery faculty are also involved in the Orthopedic Trauma rotations and didactics.

Meetings

The fellow will attend the annual meeting of the Orthopedic Trauma Association in the fall. The department of Orthopedic Surgery will subsidize travel, hotel and meeting costs.

Rounds

Morning rounds begin at 6:00 a.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. During rounds, the on-call residents present the cases that were treated during the previous 24 hours. The orthopedic trauma fellow will be encouraged to comment on treatment options, reduction methods, and relevant literature related to these cases.

Case Logs

Fellows will submit a case log to the OTA online case recording database. Only cases in which the fellow is the primary surgeon will be recorded. Multiple procedures may be recorded separately. Case logs are due August 1st of each year.

Evaluations

All evaluations are completed in New Innovations system. The Program Director and Trauma faculty will complete a confidential evaluation on the fellow a minimum of twice a year. The fellow will be responsible for evaluating the teaching faculty and the program on an annual basis. Feedback gathered from these evaluations will be reviewed and discussed in an effort to make improvements to the program. Evaluations will be made available to the OTA.

Lectures / Conferences

Fellow’s x-ray conference - Monday 6:30 am – 7:30am
Morning lecture Tuesday -Thursday – 6:30am – 7:30am
Grand Rounds - Friday – 6:30 am – 8:30am
Morbidity & Mortality - 6:30 am – 8:30am - 4th Friday each month
Quarterly Orlando/Tampa Fellow’s conference.

Fellow’s X-ray Conference

Monday mornings are dedicated to the fellow’s x-ray conference. These meetings are attended by the fellow and trauma faculty. The fellow chooses interesting or unusual operative cases with a focus on pelvic and acetabular, and/or peri articular cases from the previous week for review and discussion.

Morning Conference

Didactic conferences take place from 6:30am-7:30am Tuesday through Thursday and Fridays 6:30am-7:30 am with Grand Rounds from 7:30am-8:30am. These lectures include advanced instruction in principles of orthopedic trauma, basic science, severely injured patients, internal/external fixation, soft tissue injuries and compartment syndrome, limb salvage, diagnosis and management of complications and research methods in orthopedic trauma.

Morbidity and Mortality Conference

The objectives of M&M conference is to learn from complications and errors, to modify behavior and judgment based on previous experiences, and to prevent repetition of errors leading to complications. They are also important for identifying systems issues (e.g., outdated policies, changes in patient identification procedures, arithmetic errors, etc.

Quarterly Orlando/Tampa Fellow’s conference

The trauma fellowship in Orlando and Tampa partner and alternate hosting the quarterly fellow’s conference. This is a combined case conference and didactic lecture where the cases are presented by the fellows and lectures are given by the trauma attending physicians.

Orthopedic Trauma Journal Club

Principals of evidence-based medicine and critical review of the literature are stressed. Scientific and statistical method is taught using a practicum-based education method. The orthopedic trauma fellow, residents and attending staff are responsible for topic selection, review, and reading assignment on a monthly basis.

The fellow is expected to participate in grand rounds, the trauma core resident curriculum, journal club and mortality and morbidity conference. Fellow assignments will be made by the Trauma fellowship director.

Research

The Fellow is required to participate in ongoing or new basic science or clinical research. Research projects should result in the production/submission of a publication quality manuscript, as well as production of an abstract suitable for submission to a national meeting. Support will be provided by the Orthopedic research staff, academic staff, Director of Research, Frank Avilucea, MD and additional trauma faculty