About the Program

Since its inception in 1971, Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center has been committed to an academic tradition of providing the highest quality postgraduate fellowship education to surgeons from around the entire United States who have completed formal orthopedic, plastic, or general surgical training. These surgeons have elected to delay their own practice for an additional year, in order to expose themselves to intense training in the field of hand and upper extremity surgery.

Of the many applicants who apply each year for our 12-month fellowship positions, we select six to train. We have educated 180 postgraduate surgeons, each of whom is board-eligible when he or she begins the year with us. These young men and women have gone on after the completion of their fellowship with us to disperse themselves nationwide throughout the full spectrum of academic and private practice.

During the program, each fellow completes a two month rotation with each Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center orthopedic surgeon. They practice in the Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center's state-of-the-art 40,000 square-foot facility that includes:

• Three operating room suites
• Two procedure rooms
• Nerve block room
• Emergency room intake
• 18 exam rooms
• X-ray and EMG
• Occupational therapy department
• Surgery videotaping suite
• Anatomy lab
  

The fellows also collaborate individually with one of our surgeons to conduct an upper extremity surgery research project. Many of these projects have been published in peer-reviewed literature. Our fellows present their research findings at the annual Tri-State Conference along with other hand surgery fellows from Louisville and Cincinnati programs.