Orthopaedic Surgery Rotations

Designed to Prepare You for the Next Step of Your Career

What to expect from our ACGME approved residency program, guided by five basic tenets:

1. Every resident will attend daily educational conferences, which range from didactic lectures to grand rounds and morbidity, mortality and improvement.
2. Every resident shares the same rotations and educational experience.
3. Every resident rotates twice through the services – once as a junior resident and again as a senior resident.
4. Every resident can expect rotations to be education-based, not service-based.
5. Every resident will work with specialty-specific faculty and residents throughout the rotation in a classical apprenticeship rotation model.

At Vanderbilt, we’ve built an orthopaedic surgery program we’re proud of; a structured and graduated learning environment that gives you diverse operative experience — all under the guidance of supportive world-class faculty. 

As a Vanderbilt orthopaedic surgery resident, your first year will be split into six blocks in off service rotations and seven blocks in orthopaedic surgery rotations. During the remaining four years of the program, you will rotate through the same subspecialties twice; once as a junior resident and again as a senior resident. These subspecialties include:

• Adult Reconstruction
• Foot and Ankle
• General
• Hand and Upper Extremity
• Oncology
• Orthopedic Trauma
• Pediatric Orthopedics
• Research
• Spine
• Sports Medicine
• Veterans Affairs 

Our Facilities

With a goal of providing every Vanderbilt orthopaedic surgery resident a well-rounded experience, we created a residency program that spans multiple Vanderbilt and Nashville facilities. 

Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital

Gain valuable pediatric experience at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, one of the nation’s leading children’s hospitals, where we rank in 10 out of 10 pediatric specialties, including orthopaedics. Here, our four full-time pediatric orthopaedic surgeons and three non-operative physicians see more than 17,000 pediatric orthopedic outpatients each year.

Vanderbilt Orthopaedics

Further your medical training at Vanderbilt Orthopaedics, one of Tennessee’s leading providers for orthopaedic care. Here, you’ll have the opportunity to provide clinical and surgical care to a wide range of patients from professional athletes to active seniors. 

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you’ll gain hands-on experience treating a wide range of orthopaedic conditions, alongside a team of world-class providers. Here, we care for more than 3,000 orthopaedic patients a year, performing an average of 50 surgical cases per day.

Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Veterans Affairs Medical Center sits adjacent to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. One junior and senior resident and two full-time auxiliary faculty members staff the VAMC at all times. We treat 3,502 orthopaedic outpatients annually, performing more than 380 orthopedic procedures and caring for more than 280 orthopedic inpatients.

Rotation Schedule