<\/p>\n
Fellowships may introduce surgeons to specific techniques they haven\u2019t seen before, though. \u201cI saw zero deep plane facelifts in my residency, and I operated in the biggest medical center in the world,\u201d says Dr. Jalalabadi. The deep plane (an advanced technique that releases and repositions the tissues in a lasting and natural-looking way) was a focus of his fellowship, however, and is now, four years later, a mainstay of his practice. \u201cMy fellowship program had a strong clinic built in, where I could book my own cases and I had supervision,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy, the amount of learning that happens when you actually do a technique for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is precisely the point of a fellows\u2019 clinic: Instead of merely watching or assisting, fellows can devise surgical plans and operate autonomously, but with the safety net of having a mentor nearby. In the clinic, \u201cthe co-surgeon model is flipped,\u201d says Tyler Safran, MD, a dual fellowship-trained plastic and reconstructive surgeon in Montreal. \u201cThe fellow becomes the primary surgeon of record, and the senior surgeon is assisting or at least available to help.\u201d When Jason Bloom, MD, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon and co-director of the Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship program at the University of Pennsylvania, allows fellows to do aesthetic cases in his private surgery center, he\u2019s \u201calways around in case they have questions,\u201d he says. \u201cI could be in the other room operating, or I could be across the parking lot at my office, but I\u2019m nearby to assist if needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some residency programs offer similar experiences\u2014what\u2019s known as resident aesthetic clinics or chief cosmetic clinics\u2014enabling plastic surgery residents in their final years of training to perform injectable treatments or surgical procedures on patients for a nominal fee. (Residents\u2019 clinics have been around since the late \u201980s; today, upwards of 75% of plastic surgery programs have them.) A critical difference between residents\u2019 clinics and fellows\u2019 clinics is the degree of oversight. Residents require direct supervision, as in a senior surgeon (a.k.a., an attending) in the room with them. When a fellow is operating, however, \u201cthere\u2019s not necessarily going to be an experienced surgeon looking over their shoulder,\u201d says Dr. Clark. \u201cSome fellowship directors may do that, but that’s largely going to be the exception rather than the rule.\u201d<\/p>\n
How much experience do these surgeons actually have?<\/p>\n
Every plastic surgery resident must log a certain number of surgeries across the breadth of the specialty, including a minimum of 150 aesthetic cases. \u201cBy your final years of residency, you\u2019re functioning as a surgeon,\u201d says Matthew Farajzadeh, MD, a plastic and reconstructive surgery chief resident at UC Davis. \u201cYou still have supervision, and you still have to answer to the attendings, but you\u2019re fully working as a surgeon in the hospital.\u201d Otolaryngology (ENT) residents, who may be training to become facial plastic surgeons, have their own case requirements. In both fields, each five- to eight-year residency affords its own mix of cases and its own unique ratio of reconstructive to cosmetic procedures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fellowships may introduce surgeons to specific techniques they haven\u2019t seen before, though. \u201cI saw zero deep plane facelifts in my residency, and I operated in the biggest medical center in the world,\u201d says Dr. Jalalabadi. The deep plane (an advanced technique that releases and repositions the tissues in a lasting and natural-looking way) was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}