Residency Training Program

Yale-New Haven Hospital and Children’s Hospital are the primary teaching hospitals of the Yale University School of Medicine. Graduate training in Otolaryngology is currently a five-year program, approved by the Accreditation Counsel for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for certification by the American Board of Otolaryngology. Two candidates per year are accepted for training.

The Otolaryngology Section sees approximately fifteen thousand outpatients per year. Of these approximately two thousand are emergencies. Approximately five thousand operations are performed annually. These include rhinoplasty and septal reconstruction, mastoid and middle ear surgery and cochlear implantation. Surgery of neoplasms of the nose, sinuses, larynx and pharynx and surgical treatment of maxillofacial injuries form part of the work. Bronchesophagology and laryngology, both diagnostic and therapeutic, are also a part of the program.

The local Veteran’s Administrative Hospital in nearby West Haven along with the Hill Health Center and Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven are affiliated as part of the training program.

The work of the resident staff in the clinic and operating room is under the supervision of the full-time chief of service and the attending staff. The house officer is given progressively more responsibility as his/her judgment and technical skill develop.

The Hearing & Balance Center and Speech & Swallow Center of the Otolaryngology Section provide complete service for patients with hearing or speech problems. Audiologists work closely with the house officers during clinic sessions and are active in the training program. Specialized audiologic tests, including current neuro-otologic techniques, help localize the site of pathology in the auditory or vestibular pathway. An active Speech Pathology program is conducted providing services for a wide range of speech and swallowing disorders.

In addition to opportunities for clinical research in the above clinical areas, the house officer is urged to participate in laboratory research, either in Laryngology or the Head and Neck Cancer and Otology laboratories. Dedicated research time is available during the fourth year of training. International research fellows are regular participants in the research teams of the ENT Section.

Weekly conferences are held by the attending and house staff, many in collaboration with the Radiology and Pathology Departments. Other conferences alternate between case presentation, specific problems in Otolaryngology, and review of basic sciences. Weekly teaching rounds are conducted by the full-time faculty in the Section.

Each Wednesday throughout the academic year sessions in a portion of the Basic Sciences is held in the Otolaryngology Library. Part of the year is devoted to the dissection of the head and neck, other parts to temporal bone surgery, to pathology, and to audiology.

Medical students are in constant attendance during the academic year in the clinics, patient divisions and operating rooms. The house officer thus has the opportunity of benefiting from the didactic teaching by the faculty. This includes weekly neoplasm conference, research in progress seminar, morbidity and mortality conference, and conferences of special interest in the Department of Medicine and Pediatrics.