Residency Program Overview

The University of North Carolina Otolaryngology Residency Program is ACGME accredited for four residents per post graduate year. It is structured to include one year of surgical internship followed by four years of Otolaryngology. Following the first year of general surgery, the program offers second-year residents a six-month block for research, a four-month block at Wake Medical Center, a one-month block in the surgery ICU, and a one-month block of Speech and Hearing. Three clinical years of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery follow, during which residents are given increasing responsibility, with an emphasis on quality operative experience and teaching at UNC. Residents also rotate in four-month blocks at Wake Medical Center during their 3rd and 4th years. The 5th year residents spend all of their time at UNC. Further educational opportunities for the residents include a head and neck anatomy course on cadavers in the summer and fall, as well as a temporal bone anatomy course and competition in the spring.

Each resident in the Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery is required to design and carry out a research project during the PGY-2 year. Many have chosen to undertake their projects within the laboratories in the Department, while others have chosen to work in related disciplines such as microbiology, tumor biology, or three-dimensional processing of CT scans. The Department also has affiliations with the Dental Research Center and the Department of Anatomy. The quality of resident research has been consistently high, resulting in numerous awards and publications.

The Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery has a number of laboratories pursuing front-line research in many areas. The Auditory Physiology group is active in the fields of cochlear blood flow control, middle ear physiology and innervation, endolymphatic sac innervation, ototoxicity of new anti-microbials, and parameters influencing noise-induced hearing loss. Other projects include tracheal blood flow, the effect of growth factors on the healing of surgical wounds, and hearing loss in diabetes. The interests of the Psychoacoustics group include binaural processing in conductive-impaired listeners, spectro-temporal analysis in cochlear-impaired listeners, the development of auditory functions in young children, and the processing characteristics of the normal auditory system.

Research Track

This clinical-research combined program is approved for one resident per year as one of our four residents, and has a separate match. The research track program is a seven year program, sponsored by an NIH T-32 training grant and is designed for the applicant interested in an expanded research career in academic otolaryngology.

After a surgical internship year, this program provides two years of protected laboratory time. Following research years, the resident will return to clinical duties and complete the otolaryngology residency.