The advantage of a residency in a university hospital.

The most important point regarding residency is to effectively use your brain and hands.

The most important point regarding residency is to effectively use your brain and hands.
The medical specialist system in our country will change soon and, unlike in the past, neither physicians who are only skilled in surgical techniques (overemphasis on technical aspects) or physicians who excel only in research (overemphasis on publications) will survive in this field. As seen in the US and Europe, surgeons who can both “operate” and “write” will be the ultimate survivors. The work of a surgeon is not limited to surgery. In our department, we are considering implementing an education system that will develop the ability to think from early on in the residency period. While it is true that residents in university hospitals may not have many chances to experience actual surgeries, we are trying to educate each resident to become a comprehensive cardiovascular surgeon by providing opportunities to be exposed to advanced knowledge through discussions with senior staff and to perform surgery at affiliated hospitals.

New medical specialist system

A new medical specialist system will be implemented in 2017.

いA new medical specialist system will be implemented in 2017.
From that point onwards, the government will be involved in the medical specialist system. Although in the past, “specialist” was only a title and had no practical value, under the new system it is possible that this will change. In the new medical specialist system, the program for the area of specialty will be more actualized than before and its objective will be clearly defined. On the other hand, in order to be a specialist in a certain area, it is necessary for a resident to experience as many actual patient cases as possible. Although there are many hospitals in Japan, the number of patients per hospital is small compared to the US or Europe. Therefore, only a limited number of hospitals can provide the necessary environment to complete a residency. A system consisting of a hospital group comprised of several hospitals is therefore being planned so that residents can rotate through individual hospitals in the group to gain experience.

Advantage of an affiliated hospital group

Relationships among residency, career and education

The Department of Cardiovascular surgery at Hokkaido University has more than 20 affiliated hospitals and receives more than 1500 patients per year. For the new medical specialist system, in order to recruit a specialist, a hospital (group) is required to perform 500 surgeries. That is not a problem for our hospital. The specialist trainee will have the opportunity to acquire knowledge and research experience in a university environment and will also have opportunities to practice in affiliated hospitals. Our objective is to nurture cardiovascular surgeons with comprehensive knowledge through various education systems. Since we have a large number of affiliated hospitals, employment is not a concern. If you remain in the affiliated hospital group after training and are involved in training younger specialists, this will contribute to raise the level of the hospital group as well.

If you are interested in our department, please contact us.
Contact us ; jungeka@med.hokudai.ac.jp