Residency Overview

The Division of Urology is recognized for its surgical practice, its broad-based clinical and research programs in adult and pediatric urology, and its young, dynamic faculty. Your residency will be enriched by the large patient population embraced by these combined approaches and the resulting national visibility.

Each year, we perform more than 6,800 urologic diagnostic procedures in the UW Hospital Urology Clinic. At the VA Hospital, we perform another 500 minor and/or diagnostic procedures annually. As a resident, you will receive many opportunities to hone your clinical and surgical skills: you and your colleagues will perform well over two-thirds of UW Hospital's 1,500 urologic operations each year, as well as most of the VA Hospital urology service's 175 major procedures. The University's group practice also gives you valuable exposure to a managed care environment.

The division's clinical efforts include urologic oncology, endourology, stone disease, laparoscopy, pediatric urology, prostatitis, and neuro-urology, among other areas. Our faculty members are national experts in medical and surgical therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia, incontinence, chronic urinary tract infection, prostate and bladder cancer, and kidney stones. The division is fostering aggressive efforts in early detection and prevention of urologic cancers.

The division's didactic program is another crucial part of your training. Weekly teaching conferences - Indications, Complications, grand rounds and professor's rounds complement your clinical and surgical schedule. With ideas and resources gained from national urologic conferences, we also structure weekly subject-oriented seminars, thereby playing an integral role in planning the year's education program. In addition, all urology residents are expected to be attentive and proficient teachers of medical students.

Medical research is an important aspect of your urology residency. Many of the faculty members have basic science or clinical research programs, studying - among other topics - prostatitis, noninvasive methods of kidney and prostate surgery, genetic mechanisms in prostate cancer, the safety and efficacy of a vaccine for recurrent urinary tract infections in women, the effect of the sensory nerve system on bladder function and ureteral physiology.

The division is also involved in many clinical investigations of drug therapy and endourology instrumentation, and maintains a collaborative clinical research effort with the Department of Medicine's Division of Nephrology on the etiology and treatment of kidney stones. Faculty are participating in cooperative group studies for adult and pediatric urologic malignancies, benign prostatic hyperplasia, ureteral stents and interstitial cystitis. As a resident, you will be encouraged to become involved in these clinical trials, and to present the results of your basic and clinical research at local and national meetings.

The residency program in urology fills two positions each year through the American Urologic Association match. Your PGY-1 and -2 years are taken at UW and affiliated hospitals in general surgery, medicine, and other services. The three-year urology residency begins in the PGY-3 year, for a total of five years of training.

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Urology - University of Wisconsin Department of Surgery
First published: 07/15/02 Last updated: 05/17/08 webmaster@surgery.wisc.edu
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