Curriculum

Grand Rounds conferences are held each week on Wednesday afternoons. This period is an opportunity for residents, faculty and guest speakers to deliver didactic lectures and promote resident/faculty education. Grand Rounds are divided into two separate but interwoven sessions. The first is a didactic session, which is organized and presented by the residents on various topics, and the second is the formal department Grand Rounds, which includes department faculty, interdisciplinary faculty and invited guest speakers of national and international repute. Morbidity & Mortality conference is held once a month during the Grand Rounds time slot.

The goal of Grand Rounds is to: 

• Prepare attendees for the annual otolaryngology training examination and eventual oral and written board exam.
• Allow residents to practice presenting before formal meetings and present interesting or special cases.

A weekly tumor board is held at UCI Medical Center. The UCI tumor board is composed of a multidisciplinary team of specialists, including head and neck surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, head and neck pathologists, and neuroradiologists. The clinic is attended by social workers, and when appropriate, neurosurgeons, endocrinologists and speech pathologists. One resident is assigned to present each new case. The average volume is three new cases per week and is increasing with the progressive clinical practice volume of new faculty. The board is structured with patients coming to the outpatient clinic, where the board members can meet the patients, then move to a nearby conference room to present diagnostic studies, review pathology and discuss treatment options.

A monthly pediatric otolaryngology conference is held on the morning of the first Thursday of the month in the department resident library. It is attended by all the residents and the pediatric otolaryngologists on the faculty, who are based at Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC).

Each month, a three-hour conference dedicated to instruction in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery is provided to the residents and community otolaryngologists. These sessions are both clinical and didactic. Case studies are presented to the conference when they illustrate a particularly complex or difficult clinical problem. In addition, lectures are delivered on subjects related to facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. The goal of this conference is to supplement the facial plastic surgery education provided elsewhere in the resident experience.

A monthly vascular malformations conference is held at the Beckman Laser Institute under the direction of Brian Wong, MD, and J. Stuart Nelson, MD, PhD.

Pathology conference occurs monthly at UCI Medical Center. The conference is held in the Department of Pathology at the multi-headed microscope, where interesting and unusual head and neck pathology cases are reviewed with a pathologist. The conference is held in a room in which every resident observer has their own microscope viewer and can point to pathology and describe it for the pathologist.

The main temporal bone laboratory for the training program is a state-of-the-art facility with multiple video-equipped stations. Residents perform temporal bone dissections at the laboratories whenever they desire (the labs are always open to residents) and in four yearly sessions supervised by our neurotologist. A second, smaller laboratory is located at VA Long Beach Medical Center.

Quarterly dinner meetings are held at the local Orange County Society of Head and Neck Surgery. Academically acclaimed otolaryngologists from across the nation are invited to give presentations on their area of interest, providing a valuable and unique educational experience. The department sponsors resident annual dues to attend all society meetings.

Journal Club is a resident-led session, meeting three to four times per academic year. The residents present and discuss classic or otherwise timely and interesting articles, with faculty facilitation of discussion. The meetings are held in informal settings, often over dinner in a local venue. These meetings serve to broaden the educational experience of the residents, as well as increase camaraderie among the residents and faculty.