Welcome to the Danbury Hospital General Surgery Residency Program!

We appreciate your interest in our program and are happy to give you a brief overview of our residency. At Danbury, we pride ourselves in our warm and inviting environment. Besides the friendly atmosphere, our program offers stimulating academics, autonomous operative experience, and progressive research. We continue to focus on improving our program as we strive for excellence. These efforts include our newly established resident wellness initiative as well as our ongoing meritocracy system, now in its second year.

Regarding academics, we have weekly didactics that are based on the General Surgery SCORE curriculum that are resident-run and attending faculty moderated. We have protected time dedicated to didactics on Wednesday and Friday mornings. Our Wednesday didactics are interactive that consist of a mixture of lectures and small group discussions. On Fridays, we have our simulation lab, which is integrated with didactics and aims at improving operative and clinical skills for residents. Simulation lab includes hands on training with some of the newest tools in minimally invasive and conventional surgery. On both days of didactics, we have attendings present who participate as mentors to the residents.

Regarding operative experience, we cover not only general surgery but many surgical subspecialties in our service-based program. Our residency is divided into four main services, which include trauma/acute care surgery, surgical oncology/breast surgical oncology/HPB/colorectal/endocrine surgery, vascular/thoracic surgery, and bariatric/MIS/general surgery. Operative experience is an important aspect for every resident class. Our interns have early experience in the operating room, getting to first assist cases independently with the attending surgeon as well as with their senior resident colleagues as teaching cases. Interns are trained early in bedside procedures, including central lines, arterial lines, and chest tubes. Progressing through the program, midlevel residents begin to focus on mastering the steps of all operations, so that by their chief years they can walk junior residents through teaching cases.

Our research department is staffed with statisticians and dedicated attendings that lead various projects across different specialties. There are prospective trials, retrospective trials, quality improvement projects, and projects utilizing NSQIP among other databases that allow residents to graduate with numerous publications and national conference presentations.

Lastly, at Danbury Hospital we truly value resident wellness. The night float system and 24-hour weekend call schedule allow us to have multiple weekends off every month. This time off from work allows residents to spend time with family, friends, travel and pursue hobbies. Throughout the year our program sponsors events and activities, chosen by the residents, that promote life-lasting bonds amongst the team. These activities will be expanded upon this year through the wellness initiative, with activities during protected didactics time that will include mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.

Thank you for your interest in our program, we hope to see you in the nearby future!

Drs. Caterina Aiello and Arash Rahimi