Curriculum/Didactics

The five years spent in training will allow you to grow into a confident surgeon and practitioner. Starting as early as the beginning of your intern year, you will begin seeing urology patients autonomously on the floor and in clinic in addition to, starting to build procedural and operative skills. As an intern you will learn the basics about/perform cystoscopy and ureteroscopy, open surgical skills, laparoscopic access techniques, bedside assisting for robotic cases. By the end of training, our graduates far exceed the minimum ACGME requirements and are confident in areas of general urology, robotics/laparoscopy, urologic oncology, endourology including obtaining access for PNCL, reconstruction and in office procedures.

Weekly didactics are held every Thursday and 2nd Monday of the month from 6-7:30am at Olympia Fields Hospital. The 4th Monday of the month is our Morbidity and Mortality conference held at Silver Cross Hospital.

Our monthly conferences cover the following topics in varying degrees:

• Indications conference/mock oral (monthly)
• Journal club (monthly)
• Urology grand rounds (monthly)
• Campbell-Walsh Urology/Pediatric board review (monthly)
• Urology Guidelines (monthly)
• Uropharmacology (only on fifth Thursday of the month when present)
• Genitourinary pathology/radiology review (the months prior to in-service exam)

In addition to our resident curriculum, we have developed a separate intern curriculum allowing interns to gain an overview of all topics in urology prior to beginning work as a full time urology resident. This separate curriculum is based on the AUA core curriculum as well as overviews from Weider’s Urology Handbook. The goal is to create a strong urology foundation during intern year that will grow throughout residency.