The University of Florida Shoulder and Elbow Fellowship Program

The University of Florida Shoulder and Elbow fellowship is located in Gainesville, Florida, and is centered at the University of Florida Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, the main tertiary referral center for North Central Florida, and Shands hospital, a busy Level I Trauma and Burn Center. It is designed to offer one fellow per year a comprehensive exposure to all aspects of shoulder and elbow surgery. The fellow will rotate with 7 full-time fellowship-trained faculty including 4 ASES members, all who have a high volume of shoulder and elbow cases.

Faculty:

• Dr. Tom Wright has a large upper extremity practice primarily focused on shoulder and elbow arthroplasty and arthroscopy. The fellow typically spends two days per week on his service
• Dr. Farmer, Dr. Roach, and Dr. Sachdev have practices focused on sports medicine with a large proportion of each practice focused on arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder and elbow, and they are responsible for the care of the University of Florida Gators athletic teams (optional for the fellow).The fellow typically spends two days per week on the sports service, focusing on the most interesting shoulder and elbow cases.
• Dr. King and Dr. Jon Wright have practices that span the breadth of shoulder and elbow surgery from the sternoclavicular joint down to the elbow. The fellow typically works with them on Fridays.
• Dr. Patrick offers a unique perspective on managing both acute and chronic shoulder and elbow trauma, leveraging his dual fellowship training in trauma and shoulder and elbow. The fellow is encouraged to work with him when interesting cases arise, with some flexibility to spend additional time in trauma if the fellow desires.

The fellow is actively involved in all aspects of the patient’s care from evaluation and decision making to the surgical procedure and follow-up. The fellow will perform preoperative planning using several different planning platforms (Exactech, Enovis, Arthrex, and Stryker) that will then be used in the upcoming week, often with associated navigation platforms (Exactech GPS, Arthrex VIP, and Enovis Arvis). With 7 faculty members who all perform complex shoulder and elbow surgery with slightly different areas of emphasis, the fellow will have the flexibility to tailor their training to focus on specific areas of shoulder and elbow surgery that align with their individual interests and career goals.

The fellowship is educationally oriented and has no mandatory night call. If the fellow desires, options exist for optional ancillary income including covering an orthopaedic-only after-hours outpatient clinic, Saturday orthopaedic trauma OR, or high school football games (all paid and voluntary).

Didactic conferences are held every Tuesday morning, every other Wednesday morning, Thursday afternoons, and one Friday morning per month. Tuesday morning conferences alternate between a resident-oriented lecture and fellowship-oriented case discussions and journal clubs. Wednesday morning teaching sessions are conducted with Drs. Tom Wright, Jon Wright, and King. These occur before proceeding to the OR and are based on the Shoulder/Elbow OKU series with a discussion of recent journal articles related to those topics. Thursday preoperative conferences are conducted at the end of clinic. Friday morning conference monthly is designated for resident education on upper extremity topics. Additionally, one research meeting is held each month, dedicated to planning and discussing fellow research projects.

The fellow is expected to write one research paper of publishable quality during their time at the University of Florida. Research facilities available to the fellow and housed directly in the Department of Orthopaedics include a biomechanics lab, motion analysis lab, gene therapy lab, stem cell research lab, and a surgical skills lab. We also have two full-time clinical research coordinators responsible for the Division’s research and a shoulder arthroplasty database with over 2000 patients dating back to the 1990s. This database includes demographic data, range of motion, and patient reported outcomes. We anticipate that the fellow will have 10% of the workweek available for research and educational purposes. This time may also be used in our wet lab, which is on the top floor of our clinic building and is open to fellows at any time. The fellowship will sponsor travel to one national and one regional meeting per year. The Department also supports travel for research presentations from the fellow’s graduate work at UF.

Our fellowship is unique in that we have a high ratio of shoulder and elbow fellowship-trained faculty to a single shoulder/elbow fellow. Our goal is to supplement your experience as a resident and prepare you to be the shoulder and elbow expert wherever you choose to practice. To accomplish this, we have built in a moderate amount of flexibility into the schedule, which will allow you to focus on aspects of shoulder and elbow surgery that best suit your individual needs, with opportunities to increase your individual exposure to complex shoulder arthroplasty, sports medicine, and/or shoulder and elbow trauma based on your interests. We also aim to make this a hand-on fellowship, not an observational one, so that our fellows will leave here confident in their abilities and ready to take on complex cases.

Clinic Schedule (for the entire year)

• FSC = Florida Surgical Center (Outpatient surgical facility)
• OSMI = Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute (outpatient clinic next to FSC)
• ST = South Tower (inpatient facility 3 miles away from the outpatient facilities)
• VA = Veterans Administration Hospital (inpatient and outpatient ORs next to the South Tower)
• ONH = Ocala Neighborhood Hospital (outpatient surgical facility)

Applicants shall have completed an accredited orthopaedic residency in the United States or Canada.  We accept applications through the SF Match. Please visit ASES fellowship site for more information.

For further information, interested parties may email educationoffice@ortho.ufl.edu.

Recent Alumni