A Chat with the Program Director

Hi, I’m Lynn Knox, the Anesthesiology Residency Program Director here at UTMB. I am delighted you are interested in an exciting and rewarding career in anesthesiology and are taking a look at our program. As Program Director, my goal is simple: to provide our residents with the highest quality educational experiences in an encouraging and stimulating environment. Fortunately, this departments’ committed, energetic and gifted faculty make this goal a reality.

So how does our program work? First of all, we offer through the ERAS match positions in a 4 year categorical training program, as well as a limited number of CA-1 positions outside the match if you are already completing your intern year. Our categorical program is unique. The traditional internship or clinical base rotations are spread over the first two years of training. This allows early access to the operating room for clinical anesthesia training during even your first months of internship. Our residents really like this opportunity to jump right into the clinical practice of anesthesiology—after all, that’s what they came for. They tell me they also benefit greatly by immediately becoming a part of the department and getting to know the anesthesiology faculty, fellow residents and support staff. Something that is not usually possible with a more traditional transitional, medicine or surgical internship prior to starting anesthesiology rotations as a PGY-2. I think this will provide you with a stronger support system as you face the challenges of transitioning from medical student to resident physician.

We have a successful residency because resident education comes first. Starting at the top, our Chair, Dr. Donald Prough, is thoroughly committed to the residency program. Besides being an internationally renowned expert in intensive care and cerebral circulation research, he is Medical Director of the ICU and an outstanding clinician and teacher in both the ICU and OR settings. Clinical and didactic experiences are planned to allow our residents to achieve clinical excellence as perioperative physicians balanced with time off for study and social life.

First, let’s talk about clinical opportunities. All the anesthesia subspecialties are practiced at UTMB and you will have rotations in pediatric, cardio-thoracic, neuro, vascular, OB and regional anesthesia as well as the Intensive Care Unit and Pre-operative Consult and Pain Clinics. Our residents spend a minimum of four months in the busy adult intensive care unit, which is staffed by faculty members of the Department of Anesthesiology. This training will strengthen your ability to manage the entire spectrum of perioperative care in critically ill patients. To ensure a breadth and variety of cases and case management, our residents also gain additional experience in neuroanesthesia at the Methodist Hospital in Houston and in cardiothoracic anesthesia at the Texas Heart Institute as well as Methodist and pediatric anesthesia at Driscoll Children’s Hospital. These rotations will also give you a valuable insight into the private-practice environment. In all these venues you’ll have dedicated faculty members providing operating room teaching and supervision to guide you in the development of clinical skills and judgment. One-on-one mentoring in the first month progresses toward autonomy as your skills and judgment mature.

Now for the didactics- This residency provides one of the most extensive didactic programs found anywhere in the United States. Our faculty put an enormous amount of time and effort into providing daily educational conferences that cover applied basic science and clinical anesthesia. A variety of learning formats are used, including a morning lecture series, case conferences, Morbidity and Mortality Conferences, Grand Rounds, Journal Club, Problem Based Learning small groups, and Mock Oral sessions. Two of our faculty, our Chair Dr. Prough and Dr. Ed Sherwood, are active oral board examiners for the American Board of Anesthesiology. This enables us to organize very realistic Mock Orals.

In addition to these departmental lectures, clinical subspecialty rotations have their own didactic opportunities. The ICU rotation, for example, has daily morning rounds followed by a daily staff lecture. An ECHO conference is an integral part of the CT rotation.

You will also have the opportunity to work with our state of the art Human Patient Simulator. This is a great learning environment where you can try things out, learn from mistakes without injury to patients and be exposed to scenarios, like malignant hyperthermia, that rarely occur but are life threatening when they do.

Our program at UTMB will provide you with outstanding clinical and didactic opportunities in a supportive environment. I know I’m biased as I completed my anesthesiology residency here in 1998 and have never regretted making UTMB my first choice. In fact, about one third of our faculty trained in the UTMB program. I think there can be no better recommendation for the working relationships and living environment than having residents choose to stay on as faculty. As the saying goes, we tend to vote with our feet!

I invite you to have a look at our website for more details or feel free to contact me. I wish you the best in your search for “that perfect match”.