Message from the Chairman
- Welcome to the Department of Surgery
- Message from the Chair
- UTHSCSA and the Department of Surgery historical timeline, including photos
- Dr. Arthur McFee's history of the Department of Surgery
- Dr. Arthur McFee's history of the Health Science Center
- Dr. Arthur McFee's history of the City of San Antonio in relation
to UTHSCSA and the Dept of Surgery
- July 12, 2004 lecture / presentation by Arthur McFee, MD, Professor Emeritus, UTHSCSA Department of Surgery (very large RealVideo file - 103mb)
- Past Chairs and Faculty
Welcome to the Department of Surgery
Recruited as the Department of Surgery's first Chair in 1965, Dr. J. Bradley Aust served more than
30 years as the founding anchor for a unique, stable and extremely successful department. During Dr.
Aust's 30-year term as our Chair, all but one of his original faculty recruits remained here at the Health
Science Center. Growth has been a constant - the OR load in 1969 was 4500 patients annually; in 2003, annual OR
patient load had reached 15,000. We are a level 1 trauma center covering nearly 50,000 square miles of the
South Texas area.
To honor our founding Chair, the J. Bradley Aust Surgical Society, an alumni organization, was created in 1968. It has become a very active group, providing travelling fellowships for residents, a resident library, book fund, and development of projects traditionally left to private venues.
Since its inception in 1966, the Department of Surgery of the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio has trained more than 180 graduates in general surgery; more than half of these graduates have pursued surgical specialty careers. We anticipate a future of initiative, new ideas and continued growth.
The Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has outstanding surgical residency, fellowship, and medical student training programs designed to prepare our residents and students to accomplish their educational and professional goals.
We are dedicated to the teaching of medical students in the preclinical years; fostering mentorship and academic support from the first year of medical school throughout residency and beyond. We offer rotations in all of the surgical specialties, laboratory research, and residency preparation courses.
The primary goal of our residency program is to produce surgeons who can operate with skill, have unsurpassed clinical judgment, and show compassion and respect for their patients. Our residents are able to practice confidently the art and science of surgery, achieve board certification, and become leaders in the field of their choosing. Our graduates are prepared for highly rewarding careers as broadly-trained general surgeons. Upon graduation, the majority of our residents pursue fellowship training in the best of subspecialty training programs. Those residents who do not desire additional training are extremely successful in the private practice community. Our graduates have taken positions in a great variety of locations throughout the United States.
An outstanding Department of Surgery must excel in clinical teaching, have a solid didactic curriculum, and provide the opportunity to experience laboratory and clinical research on a first-hand basis. Board certification is essential today, and we have made preparation for successful board examinations a priority in the residency with the assistance of faculty who are associate examiners for the American Board of Surgery.
We are committed to attracting outstanding students and providing them excellent training so that the future of general surgery will be in good hands!
Stephen Cohn, MD
Chairman and Professor
