Services | Acute Care Surgery

The Division of Acute Care Surgery is designed to manage the urgent and emergent General Surgery patients and Trauma patients. To address the management of patients with illnesses that mandate urgent attention, each of the Surgery services has several attending staff who bear a special interest in emergency care. The attendings take in-hospital call with the residents assigned to their service on a rotating basis. Since Henry Ford is a 650 bed institution that also houses an Emergency Department that handles over 100,000 visits annually, one can expect that the care of the critically ill will be a major part of your educational experience. To emphasize our commitment to this concept, we have maintained our designation as a Level 1 Trauma Center under the direction of Dr. Pat Patton, Chief of the Division of Acute Care Surgery. The Acute Care Surgery team manages about 1,400 patients annually, with a 7:3 blunt-to-penetrating mechanism of injury ratio. Of the 31 operating suites available for all surgical services, there exists an immediate operating room access policy for the seriously injured, or critically ill patient.

The other integral part of the division is Critical Care. Dr. Mathilda Horst, Director of the Surgical Critical Care service manages a 60 bed state of the art Surgical Intensive Care Unit that is designed to assist you with the moment to moment care of such patients. There is also an 18 bed Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit to provide further opportunities for education. Perioperative care is provided by a multi-professional team of nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, case managers, surgeons and intensivists who beleive in achieving excellence in patient care. Our teaching program provides experience for residents from many different specialties. From bedside presentations and patient management, to bedside procedures and communication skills, residents add to their knowledge and skill sets. Evidence based on protocols and guidelines help provide structure. Formal lectures, bedside teaching, electronic media enrich the academics, along with the requirement to complete the Fundamentals of Critical Care support course during their first rotation in the unit.

While assigned to each of the Surgery services, the patients are yours to manage on a 24/7 basis. We feel patient care is best learned from this type of "hands-on" approach, guided by a self-imposed plan of directed reading on your patients' illnesses. This is further strengthened by a regular pattern of staff service teaching rounds and unified by a series of interactive conferences designed to give the residents a complete overview of the relevant clinical and scientific literature over a five year time frame. We remain confident that if you take full advantage of this opportunity, you will leave our program well -equipped to progress to the next level of your career.