Hand Surgery Fellowship

Hand conference
Hand Conference is held each Thursday morning. These conferences are organized and led by the hand fellow in conjunction with the hand surgery faculty and are intended to cover comprehensive topics in hand surgery with a focus on best practices from the literature. The hand fellow and faculty can work together to develop this hand conference curriculum to make it as useful as possible for both the fellow and resident attendees.

Other conferences and skills labs
The Plastic Surgery residents have conferences on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in addition to the Thursday morning hand conferences. Fellows are encouraged to attend these conferences when the planned topic is relevant to hand and upper extremity surgery.

Mondays are used for photo conferences, where an unknown case is presented and the residents are taken through principles of management and treatment. There is input from the faculty and opportunities for both senior and junior learners.

Wednesday conferences are a mixture of Anatomy Labs, Surgical Skills Labs, and basic science/clinic knowledge conferences.

• Anatomy Labs: For 9 weeks, junior residents are assigned weekly anatomy topics. When their schedules permit, residents are expected to spend time dissecting throughout the week.  On Wednesday mornings, the juniors review their topics with all the residents. These dissections and reviews are held in our Memorial Center for Learning and Innovation (MCLI) Surgical Skills Lab. 
• Surgical Skills Labs: Every other month, we have a skills lab in Memorial Center for Learning and Innovation with flap dissection. The curriculum is set up so that every flap listed will be performed by the resident in cadaver lab prior to graduation. 
• CoreQuest Conference: We utilize the ACAPS Corequest Curriculum for educational conferences. Our schedule allows us to rotate through every topic in one year.

Friday conference is a mix of board preparation conference, journal club, M&M, and special sessions, such as wellness, financial planning, practice setup and negotiation, etc.

Fellows are strongly encouraged to attend at least one external conference during their time here at SIU.  The Division will provide funding for 2 conferences to cover the cost of travel and registration. ASSH and AAHS are the conferences that are typically selected.

Cadaveric Skills Labs
The anatomy lab at our state-of-the-art J. Roland Folse, MD Surgical Skills Center is a unique and invaluable tool for learning during fellowship.  Fellows have frequent access to cadaver hand and upper extremities to learn surgical techniques and explore and solidify their knowledge of surgical anatomy.  Additionally, we are developing a hand and upper extremity dissection curriculum to maximize the benefits of such an opportunity.

Microsurgery
Residents and fellows feel very fortunate to have a microsurgical skills lab readily available where they can practice microsurgery in vivo. When fellows have free time, they can schedule a microsurgery practice session. This extra practice allows for greater skill and autonomy by the time fellows are expected to perform microsurgery for flaps or revascularization in the operating room.