Residency Program
Hospitals
Most of the program’s residency training occurs at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital. Training in the neurosurgical care of neonates takes place at Women and Infants Hospital. Because all three hospitals are physically interconnected, residents can obtain broad training on a single medical campus.
Rhode Island Hospital
As the state’s largest, general, acute-care hospital, Rhode Island Hospital provides comprehensive care. The 719-bed private, nonprofit hospital, part of the Lifespan system, operates one of the nation’s ten busiest emergency departments. Its Level 1 Trauma Center serves a large part of southeastern New England.
Hasbro Children’s Hospital
Hasbro Children’s Hospital, designed with input from parents, children, and health-care professionals, opened in 1994 to architectural acclaim. As Rhode Island’s premier pediatric hospital, its state-of-the-art facilities include specialized emergency services, trauma treatment, and the area’s only pediatric intensive care unit.
Women and Infants Hospital
Women and Infants Hospital, part of Rhode Island’s Care New England network, performs over 70% of all obstetrical deliveries in the state. Each year, the hospital cares for more than 1000 critically ill newborns. Its Special Care Nursery, a Level III neonatal intensive care unit, uses an interdisciplinary approach to treating infants with serious medical problems.
Brown Medical School Virtual Tour
Hospital Facilities
Our Neurosurgery Department houses an 20 bed Neuro Intensive Care/Stroke Unit and highly specialized physician and nursing teams, located on the Neuroscience Floor in the Bridge Building of Rhode Island Hospital.
Similarly, we have a dedicated Spine Floor with specialized nursing staff where we care for our patients with a whole spectrum of spinal disorders. It is located on the 6th floor in the Bridge Building.
All adult neurosurgery and neurology beds, including an 18 bed Neurological Critical Care Unit, occupy one floor of Rhode Island Hospital, facilitating care delivery. Our department uses four to five adult neurosurgical operating rooms at the hospital.
These rooms contain:
• an intraoperative ultrasound
• a Cavitron Ultrasonic Surgical Aspirator
• a CO2 laser
• neuro-endoscopes
• three Zeiss microscopes
• CT and MRI-guided stereotactic equipment, including multiple BrainLAB units
• frameless stereotactic systems for intraoperative navigation as well as intraoperative radiation therapy equipment
• two Mobius AIRO intraoperative CT scanners
• wide-screen/plasma-screen monitors for teaching, video editing, and documentation
The hospital’s facilities also include:
• a surgical intensive care unit
• a medical intensive care unit
• a trauma intensive care unit
• a cardiac intensive care unit
• a neurodiagnostic imaging suite, staffed for 24-hour CT and MRI service, with two Siemens 1.5 T MRI scanners with state-of-the-art capabilities and three spiral CT scanners, one of which has 16-detector capability
• three invasive neuroradiology suites
The hospital’s New England Gamma Knife Center, initiated in 1992, was one of the first gamma knife centers in the United States. It has offered hope to patients with previously untreatable lesions.
The Leksell Gamma Knife emits 201 finely focused gamma rays that converge with high accuracy on a single point, sparing nearby tissue. With little patient discomfort, it treats a number of pathological and functional conditions, including:
• arteriovenous malformations
• meningiomas
• acoustic neuromas
• other deep-seated intracranial tumors
• metastatic brain tumors
• obsessive-compulsive disorder
Hasbro Children’s Hospital
Hasbro’s four pediatric operating suites include one specially equipped for pediatric neurosurgery. The hospital is set up for long-term monitoring of epilepsy patients and for brain mapping to guide epilepsy surgery. A pediatric ICU helps care for postoperative patients after craniotomy and intraspinal surgery. Full pediatric support services are provided, including dedicated pediatric neuro-oncologists and pediatric neurologists. Dedicated multidisciplinary pediatric craniofacial and neuro-oncology clinics serve our patient population. Moreover, Hasbro is the only pediatric center in New England to successfully perform fetal repair of myelomeningocele.
Libraries
Libraries
The Peters Health Sciences Library at Rhode Island Hospital contains over 20,000 volumes and 600 journals. It permits after-hours access to the stacks when needed for patient care.
The library subscribes to a number of electronic databases, such as Medline, Ovid Full Text, AIDsline, Bioethicsline, CancerLit, MD Consult, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Residents can access the library’s electronic resources from on campus as well as remotely.
Residents may also use the Brown University libraries. From their home or call room, they can utilize the libraries’ electronic resources, including their catalog, interlibrary loan services, and electronic databases such as Medline, the Cochrane Library, and ScienceDirect. The Brown libraries subscribe to over 4000 electronic journals, including over 1000 medical titles.