Hand Surgery Fellowship

The U-M Medical School Hand Fellowship offer two one-year training positions for board-eligible plastic and orthopaedic surgeons seeking additional training in the evaluation and management of upper extremity problems. The program runs from August 1 through July 31 each year and offers:

• A truly combined program, with equal immersion in both plastic surgery-based and orthopaedic surgery-based Hand Services. Our fellows have found this to be a unique benefit to our program. This type of collaborative interaction is not found in many academic centers.
• A busy clinical practice, treating patients with a range of common and complex conditions, including traumatic injuries, arthritis, tendonitis, nerve compression, congenital differences, vascular or circulation problems, tetraplegia, brachial plexus injury, and tumors of the hand.
• A rotation schedule designed to immerse you in the full lifecycle of care, from the clinic to the OR to a patient’s postoperative rehabilitation.
• Exposure to a range of clinical care settings, including adult and pediatric tertiary-care hospitals, outpatient clinics and ambulatory surgery centers, and a community hospital experience.
• Annual lectures from visiting experts as part of the Michigan Hand Surgery Visiting Professor program. Past visiting professors include Drs. James Chang, Richard Gelberman, Brent Graham, Michelle Carlson, and Michelle James, just to name a handful.
• A global health experience in the form of a teaching/service trip is available to every University of Michigan Hand Fellow. Past fellows have traveled to a variety of countries for week-long international experiences, providing surgical care as well as educational seminars in these countries.  

Although the faculty are evenly distributed between Orthopaedic and Plastic Surgery, we think of ourselves first and foremost as Hand Surgeons, and we function as a unified group. The majority of training is carried out at the University of Michigan Medical Center, which includes the University Hospital and the adjacent C. S. Mott Children's Hospital. Outpatient clinics and ambulatory surgery centers are situated "off-campus", but these facilities are within a short drive of the Medical Center. A unique, community-based hospital experience is also available at the nearby Trinity Health Chelsea Hospital, where our hand surgeons also do cases.

The rotation schedule is set up in 2- and 4-month blocks to allow continuous immersion in the practice of these faculty members. The fellows accompany the faculty member to both the clinic and the operating room during these rotations, providing continuity of care between the initial evaluation, the operative management, and postoperative rehabilitation of each patient. The fellows are given incrementally increased responsibility throughout the year, as they move through the program.

Our curriculum has been carefully designed to address the six core competencies set forth by ACGME:

1. Medical knowledge
2. Patient care
3. Practice based learning and improvement
4. Interpersonal and communication skills
5. Systems based practice
6. Professionalism

The teaching curriculum covers the full spectrum of hand surgery in a series of weekly conferences held jointly with the Plastic Surgery and Orthopaedic Surgery hand teams. These conferences are attended by the fellows, residents, and faculty on the hand surgery services. Lectures are entirely virtual, so that learners can tune in easily from all different clinical sites.  Lectures are recorded and available for later viewing. 

The discussions are typically interactive and case-based, with occasional didactic lectures as well.  Most lectures are led by the hand surgery faculty, with several guest speakers throughout the year, and each hand fellow is asked to prepare a conference two times per year to build on their teaching experience.

Several of our hand faculty are also AO teaching faculty, so we are privileged to have an on-site AO course at the University of Michigan every few years. Additionally, we typically host a regional skills course coordinated with our visiting professor program annually. Partnership with industry has allowed our trainees hands-on experience with nerve repair and grafting, wrist and small joint arthroscopy, advanced bone fixation techniques for ligament repair, as well as fracture fixation with a variety of implant systems. 

In addition to the in-house offerings, fellows are encouraged to travel to regional and national courses for additional exposure to advanced techniques. 

At the U-M Medical School, the ACGME duty hour restrictions are strictly monitored and enforced for both residents and fellows. Hand surgery fellows at Michigan cover emergency hand call on average every third night. Junior residents provide "first call" coverage for floor calls and consults; the hand fellows are expected to supervise the residents when evaluating challenging consults or performing complex procedures in the Emergency Department. When cases go to the OR, the  fellows are always backed up by an attending surgeon.

We have a vibrant research element to the hand fellowship here at Michigan Medicine. Fellows can participate in M-CHOIR and M-OPEN research initiatives, amongst many other opportunities. M-CHOIR, or Michigan Center for Hand Outcome and Innovation Research, conducts hand centered research projects. M-OPEN, or Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network, focuses on new ways to manage pain and minimize opioid use for all surgical procedures in the state of Michigan. Fellows can also get research opportunities and support through CHOP (Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy), which is a robust health services research team. Opportunities also exist for biomechanical studies, anatomy studies, and more through the extensive collaboration between Plastic Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery, and the University at large.

Learn more about Plastic Surgery research

Learn more about Orthopaedic Surgery research

Graduates of the U-M Medical School Hand Fellowship program have been universally successful at obtaining placement in their desired career path. Whether our graduates continue with a career in academia or pursue private practice, our goal is to prepare them to be excellent, responsible, ethical surgeons wherever they put down roots.