Urology Los Angeles Medical Center
Kaiser Permanente Urology’s basic mission is to provide our trainees with world-class training and to foster and support their personal growth and professional goals throughout their residency and into their career. At Kaiser Permanente we offer a unique training experience with unmatched surgical volume, clinical education, and academic mentorship.
Our program is a fully accredited, six-year residency with two applicants selected each year. As the nation’s largest integrated health care system with a diverse population of over 4.5 million members, our flagship center located in the heart of Los Angeles is the major referral center which provides tertiary and quaternary care for Southern California.
Residents have the opportunity to take advantage of our vast network of hospitals and sub-specialists throughout the region. Our curriculum is carefully curated to optimize resident training and professional development. We offer residents the best of both worlds – the leadership, research support, and surgical complexity and volume of an academic center combined with the mentorship, early-autonomy, and open-door approachability of a community-based system. We are so proud each year to send our graduates to top-ranked fellowships or straight into the world as future leaders of our field.
Goals & Objectives
Our faculty are fully dedicated to our residents throughout their residency, with the intention of graduating outstanding surgeons, clinicians, and leaders. Residents have the ability to initiate, develop and drive high-quality innovative epidemiologic and translational projects by working closely with our Department of Research and Evaluation as well as medical students at the Bernard Tyson School of Medicine in Pasadena, California. Resident-driven IRB protocols are awarded 100 hours of biostatistician support to help complete and publish their projects in high-impact journals.
Dedicated time is built into the weekly schedule for educational conferences as well as regular faculty lectures, journal clubs, surgical video review, pre-operative case review, M&Ms, and imaging and multi-head microscope genitourinary pathology review. A resident-driven robotics curriculum starts in the intern year with simulation and bedside assisting and then rapidly escalates and progresses from the R2 year to the chief year. Hands-on skills workshops are held (e.g. MRI fusion biopsy, PCNL, robotics) which augment a holistic teaching approach.
Additional didactics are provided with formal lectures and training in a variety of areas of leadership, business, and life-skills including diversity, wellness, medico-legal talks, cost – savings and billing, job recruitment, and contract negotiation, patient communication, physician leadership, and public speaking. We are dedicated to developing and maintaining resident wellness and have ample opportunities with our own department as well as GME-wide initiatives and activities. Our Program Director and Associate Program Director meet quarterly with the residents for a “resident check-in” to gain insight, get constructive feedback, and work dynamically to consistently improve and strengthen the program and the resident experience.
Patient rounds are made daily, and grand rounds are held weekly during which resident and attending physicians are free from all clinical duties. Visiting professors are scheduled on an annual basis, and residents are strongly encouraged and funded to attend outside meetings and conferences. The Department of Urology hosts the annual Jon A. Kaswick Kaiser Permanente Urology Symposium which attracts experts from around the world to give state of the art lectures.
Kaiser Permanente urology residents have traditionally scored extremely well on in-service exams as well as board certification. The volume of surgical cases is invariably high as measured by the USOL.
