The Plastic Surgery Integrated Residency at Mayo Clinic's campus in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona, is open to medical school graduates interested in specializing in plastic surgery. The program is six years long and offers one position each year.

In the first two years, the program emphasizes broad training in all aspects of surgery. A total of seven months of the first two years are spent on plastic surgery services at the various hospitals in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Dedicated research rotations are built into the first three years of training to allow you sufficient time to develop and produce quality research projects with the goal of peer-reviewed publications and presentations.

Advanced training in surgical anatomy is incorporated into the second year of training for a two-month rotation in conjunction with the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine anatomy lab. In this capacity, you serve as a junior faculty in anatomy by carrying out the prosecutions daily and then taking the first-year medical students through their dissections.

A month of neurosurgery at Barrow Neurological Institute, which is ranked as one of the best neurology and neurosurgery care centers in the United States, provides you with exposure to the management of skull base tumors.

As a resident, you spend time at the Arizona Burn Center (one of the busiest in the country) and with the otolaryngology surgeons at Mayo Clinic, who perform large volumes of head and neck reconstruction cases, making for a well-rounded, integrated curriculum that prepares you to become a board-certified plastic surgeon.

The last four years of your training in plastic surgery encompasses in-depth training in every aspect of the specialty, including aesthetic surgery, microsurgery, general reconstruction, complex pediatric and craniofacial surgery, and hand surgery.

A Chief Resident Aesthetic Clinic meets weekly and provides an independent operating experience for the chief administrative resident.

Providing care to those less fortunate across the globe is an emphasis of the program. Mission trips to Kenya, Honduras, and Haiti have been carried out with plans to have all residents participate in at least one mission trip during their residency.

Mayo's high faculty-to-resident ratio, large patient population, and state-of-the-art diagnostic, therapeutic and research facilities combine to create a truly integrated, exceptional-quality educational experience. The "Mayo way" of graduate medical education ensures you have the finest teaching and the broadest patient care experience possible during a busy, hands-on residency program.

All rotations are selected by the program director and associate program director and are considered necessary for plastic surgery resident education. Rotations are selected to provide exposure to a diverse population of patients encompassing the full spectrum of patients and plastic surgery problems.

Graduates of our plastic surgery residency have entered academic practices at major university hospitals and private practice. All of our plastic surgery residents have passed their written board exams, and those eligible for the oral board examination have passed that portion as well. All graduates have exceeded the minimum Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education case log requirements for graduation in all of the index case categories.

Accreditation

The program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Certification

After successfully completing the program, you are eligible to take the written examination offered by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

Program history

Mayo Clinic's Plastic Surgery Integrated Residency in Arizona began in 2008. We anticipate that one trainee will complete this program annually.