Message from Program Director

Welcome to The University of New Mexico General Surgery Residency Program! I am proud to be the new Program Director for our outstanding residency program. We have a tradition of training excellent clinical surgeons who go on to community practice jobs across the Mountain West and competitive fellowships. We pride ourselves on having a comprehensive clinical training program with a high operative volume that treats a diverse population with a broad spectrum of diseases.

UNM Hospital is New Mexico's only Academic Medical Center, Level 1 Trauma Center and NCI Cancer Center. We support and live the overall mission of the UNM School of Medicine and commit to the core values. We provide outstanding care to all New Mexicans and are committed to training a diverse group of surgeons to serve their communities.

Our graduating Chief Residents are extremely well trained as a result of high operative volumes and an exceptional amount of operative and clinical autonomy during the program. Our graduates greatly exceed case numbers in all of the required ACGME areas and are ready for independent practice at the end of the five clinical years. About two-thirds of our graduates go on to fellowship training to gain more operative skills and refine the ones they already possess.

A highlight of our program is our CORE7 wellness curriculum. The CORE7 program was imagined, designed, and implemented by our surgical residents. We focus the program on the six domains of wellness and use our protected education time to cover Physical, Social, Emotional, Spiritual, Occupational, and Financial wellness topics. Our CORE7 curriculum has been so innovative and successful that elements have been adopted by the UNM GME office.

Education is cornerstone of our residency program. Our department leadership is committed to resident and medical student education and places a priority on education initiatives. We strive to recruit residents who will continue our strong education mission by being active participants in the learning environment for both medical students and their co-residents. I believe that just as we need to teach our residents how to tie knots and use the DaVinci robot, we also need to train them on how to be an excellent teacher. We run a Residents as Educators course in the beginning of each academic year to train our residents on teaching strategies and feedback.

Lastly, As the Program Director I am committed to diversity and inclusion in our training program. I am proud of our resident group, and we have great representation as far as gender, geography, and underrepresented in medicine minorities. However, we can always do better. I strive to have a program were residents of all backgrounds are recruited, supported, mentored, and are trained to be phenomenal surgeons in the community and academics.

I look forward to meeting you and hope you consider joining us at the University of New Mexico. Go Lobos! 

@JSPaulTraumaDoc

@UNM_Surgery