General Surgery Residency Program

A MESSAGE FROM THE PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Dear Doctor: There is an old blessing that states “may you live in interesting times”.  It is no secret that the field of surgery and surgical training is living in those interesting times.  We face great challenges in the field – new technology, new techniques, changes in the health care system as a whole.  Add to that the challenges that come with paradigm shifts in graduate medical education and the need to work (and teach) smarter, not harder, with the time given to us to help form a young medical graduate into a competent and caring surgeon.

It is also true that we sometimes find the unexpected where we least expect it.  You may not have ever visited – or even heard of – Saginaw and the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan.  Maybe you have.  But for the last 40 years, the general surgery residency program at Synergy has been training surgeons who have gone into successful private and academic practice not only locally and regionally, but nationally, and even internationally.  Some of our graduates have gone on to fellowship training in areas such as trauma, plastic surgery, and vascular surgery at institutions such as the University of Minnesota, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins and others.

Our program is small, but provides amenities found in larger programs, with the added bonus of unparalleled clinical experience with a solid group of both full-time and community faculty.  We have a very active didactic program and clinical research opportunities (our residents have presented their work both regionally and nationally, and have had their work published).  In addition, we have one of the most active simulation and skills centers in Michigan – unique for a program our size. Synergy’s acquisition by the new Central Michigan University College of Medicine provides our program with exciting growth and expansion opportunity, and access to resources found only in a university setting. 

We invite you to meet the challenges with us.  We invite you to discover both the interesting and the unexpected here at Synergy.

Yours truly,

Peter Bistolarides MD MBA FACS FRCSC