Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency

About the Program 

Director: Geoffrey Towers, M.D.

The Wright State University Affiliated Hospitals Integrated Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Program is based at Miami Valley Hospital with rotations to the USAF Medical Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Miami Valley Hospital is an 848-bed, state-of-the-art tertiary referral hospital, and has the only tertiary maternity/neonatal care facility in a 17-county area of Southwest Ohio. The USAF Medical Center, Wright-Patterson, is one of the largest Joint Service teaching and referral hospitals in the United States.

The chair, program director, associate program directors, faculty, program coordinator, affiliated hospitals, and clinic disciplines are actively involved in the educational program. The program is currently approved to train six residents per year for a total of 24 residents. Three of the residents in each program year are military and are chosen through the Joint Service Graduate Medical Education Selection Board (JSGMESB). The three civilian residents are selected through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP).

In addition to inpatient obstetrics and gynecology, the first year of residency provides formal rotations in critical care, outpatient gynecology, ultrasound, emergency medicine and family planning.

Didactic conferences by the full-time and clinical faculty cover all specialty and subspecialty aspects of obstetrics and gynecology, including maternal-fetal medicine, urogynecology, gynecologic oncology, pathology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, and care of special populations. Additional conferences include gynecologic preoperative conferences, fetal monitor strip reviews, tumor board, morbidity and mortality conferences and journal club. A robust Grand Rounds schedule enables inclusion of a wide range of topics from various visiting speakers. Additionally, a specific interest and focus of our training program is to provide education and experience in improving health equity for underserved populations. 

Residents in our program are required to complete a research project during their residency, aided by the Director of Research. The topic and study design, as well as IRB approval, should be completed under the advice of a faculty mentor not later than the end of the first year of residency. Residents will present their research at the end of the third year of residency at the Resident Research Day, and the goal of the fourth year is to work toward publication of research. Publication in peer-reviewed literature, though strongly encouraged, is not a requirement for graduation. 

The progressive education of the resident is integrated with the participant's clinical experience, utilizing patient clinics, supervised surgery, daily teaching rounds and combined staff rounds. In-depth experience is provided in high-risk obstetrics, ultrasound with both abdominal and vaginal probe exposure, endocrine infertility, laparoscopy, minimally invasive surgical techniques, pelviscopy, microsurgery, coloscopy, general and radical surgery, laser applications with both intra-abdominal and external and gynecologic urology.

The faculty incorporates the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) six competencies into all of their teaching and instruction so that the residents may demonstrate the following:

1. Patient Care that is compassionate, appropriate, and effective for the treatment of health programs and the promotion of health;
2. Medical Knowledge about established and evolving biomedical, clinical, and cognate sciences, as well as, the application of this knowledge to patient care;
3. Practice-based learning and improvement that involves the investigation and evaluation of care for their patients, the appraisal and assimilation of scientific evidence, and improvements in patient care;
4. Interpersonal and communication skills that result in the effective exchange of information and collaboration with patients, their families and other health professionals;
5. Professionalism, as manifested through a commitment to carrying out professional responsibilities, adherence to ethical principles, and sensitivity to patients of diverse backgrounds; and
6. System-based practice, as manifested by actions that demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger context and system of health care, as well as, the ability to call effectively on other resources in the system to provide optimal health care.

Progressive skills are monitored by a resident experience recognition program. These recognitions are granted to each resident upon satisfactory documentation and performance of techniques, skills and decision-making in his/her training rotations. Chief residents directly manage their respective services with access to full-time and clinical faculty for supervision, consultation and conferences. The progression of the program is balanced and non-pyramidal.

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Resident Program Manual (PDF)