The PGY6 year is the junior chief resident year. Six months of the PGY6 year is spent at Rush University Medical Center either on the spine or brain/vascular clinical service. The other six months of the PGY6 year are spent at Lutheran General Hospital in a combined trauma/pediatric/elective surgery rotation and Alexian Brother’s Medical Center Gamma Knife rotation. The junior chief resident supervises the educational and quality activities of the program, supervises junior residents, prepares on-call schedule and prepares monthly morbidity and mortality presentation.

The chief resident spends ½ day in the out patient clinic. He/she collaborates and performs complex neurosurgical operations under the supervision of the attending.

• Organize and manage the clinical service on a daily basis
• Perform all neurosurgical procedures safely and accurately
• Be able to function independently regarding patient care decisions
• Be accountable for all issues regarding patient care
• Demonstrate management of patient complications
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of complications
• Demonstrate understanding of cranial microsurgery
• Demonstrate understanding of spinal microsurgery
• Demonstrate judgment in operative decisions
• Demonstrate judgment in non-operative decisions

• Communicate and teach residents, interns, and medical students effectively
• Maintain and organize data for M&M on a monthly basis, performing literature search, re: complications
• Lead conferences in a manner that incorporates the most up-to-date research, literature, and basic science knowledge
• Demonstrate mastery of cranial neuroanatomy
• Demonstrate mastery of spinal neuroanatomy
• Demonstrate mastery of peripheral nerve anatomy

• Assist the Program director in ensuring the personal and academic development of junior residents
• Serve as an administrator for the Neurosurgical Service
• Develop knowledge of the skills required to organize and administrate a Neurosurgical Residency Program
• Utilizes CNS SANSwired, MedHub, GME-Today and other web-based tools
• Demonstrate critical self-assessment
• Demonstrate an understanding of personal limits in skills and knowledge

• Attend daily neurosurgery ward rounds on time
• Interact effectively with interns, medical students, nursing and discharge planners
• Maintain professional rapport with the patient, the patient’s families, nurses, other physician teams and other hospital personnel
• Demonstrate a compassionate, caring approach to patients and their families
• Demonstrate respect for patients and colleagues from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds
• Demonstrate honesty in all professional interactions
• Demonstrate good dress and grooming style constituent with institutional and departmental guidelines
• Comply with all GME and Departmental policies regarding duty hours restrictions
• Accurately self-report fatigue in situations that may compromise safety and/or patient care
• Maintain primary focus on patient’s concerns

• Demonstrate a cost-effective approach to clinical care
• Participate in effective discharge planning with hospital personnel
• Participate in the planning of long term care of neurosurgery patients with social workers, physical therapists and nurse practitioners
• Understand the moral and ethical issues pertaining to critically ill patients including: patient or family requests to withhold or withdraw treatment and organ donation
• Understand the medical and legal definitions of brain death
• Understand and discuss health care delivery systems, the economics of medicine and demonstrate an understanding of evaluation and management coding
• Understand the important role neurosurgery plays in emergency care
• Participate and demonstrate an understanding of current trends in medical care by keeping up-to-date with reading of Medical Economics and MGMA
• Participate and lead quality assessment and improvement initiatives instituted by national organizations (JCAHO, etc)
• Participate and lead in quality assessment and improvement initiatives instituted by the hospital and chief medical officer
• Participate and lead in quality assessment and improvement initiatives instituted by the department of neurosurgery

The PGY6 year provides the junior chief resident with intensive operative experience. The junior chief resident organizes and presents the monthly morbidity and mortality meetings, providing literature and film studies on each case to discuss any and all quality assurance issues and the steps to make corrective actions for improving patient care. The junior chief resident participates in quality improvement activities overseen by the program director and is responsible for the monthly on-call schedule.

The PGY6 spends six months at Lutheran General Hospital for an in-depth experience in neurotrauma and pediatric neurosurgery under the direct supervision of the neurosurgery attendings at that institution and during this rotation, the resident will spend ½ day a week (Friday mornings) for Gamma Knife case at Alexian Brothers Medical Center under direct supervision of Dr. George Bovis. The junior chief’s responsibilities are physician specific with this rotation, there are no obligations to draw blood, place lines, or support patient transportation.

PGY6 Competencies Evaluation Methods:

• Twice a year electronic evaluation by neurosurgical attendings in MedHub
• Annual 360 degree electronic evaluation by operating room nurses, ICU and Ward nurses, and out-patient clinic staff in MedHub
• Annual out-patient clinic evaluation by Program director
• Annual Mock Orals
• Annual self-evaluation
• Quarterly oral evaluations by attendings at a private conference portion of Department meeting
• Regular review of medical documentation in patient’s charts by neurosurgery attending(s)
• MedHub resident learning portfolio
• MedHub duty hours report/analysis
• MedHub conference attendance report/analysis
• Graduation Day/Academic Day – Research Presentation
• End-of-Rotation review of all evaluations and data by Program director