Mercy Hospital in Des Moines

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Does any one know anything about the surgery program at Mercy?

Hi docgeorge,

I'm at Iowa Methodist, so I've heard a bit about this program, being that I'm in the same city.

It's an osteopathic program. Basically, whomever was running the DO surgery program here (I'm sorry I don't know details) pulled out and the residents were left without a program - which was catastrophic, as you can imagine. Mercy hospital, which had been the main hospital for most of the training, decided to pick up the residency, so that folks could finish their training, and for whatever self serving reasons Mercy had as well, I suppose.

We used to work with the Mercy residents when they rotated with us on Pediatric Surgery, until the politics got in the way. In any event, the residents seemed to be very bright, very knowledgable, very capable in the OR. My sense is that the program is in flux, but that the core surgery training is very, very good. I believe you would graduate an experienced and accomplished surgeon, based on what I know about the docs on teaching staff there. I can't comment about the didactics, preparation for boards, so forth, and I doubt that all of that has been defined very well yet.

If you are competitive, it would probably be a safer bet to go with another program. But if you just want to be a surgeon and are willing to gamble a bit, I think you would get good operative exposure here and, with some self motivatin, could make it work.

best of luck

Hi, Docgeorge,

I am a pgy-1 who is slated to start at Mercy this July as an R2. As womansurg stated, it is the new home of the osteopathic general surgery program that was previously housed at the old Des Moines General Hospital. As with any program that has had major changes there is some risk involved with this program. I feel that the risk is worth the opportunuty to train with the surgeons in this program. There is also the opportunity to train with the Iowa Heart Center and Iowa Ortho. Mercy Hospital seems very comitted to making this program a perm fixture of their hospital. (I think it will allow them to become a level I trauma center.) Mercy is a large hospital with a very large volume of excellent general surgery cases as well as excellent trauma. In addition to the G surg program, a surgery linked osteopathic internship is starting this July as well. There will also be a surgical research year available.

Currently to my knowledge all of the required "hoops" have been jumped through for this program to be a perminant addition the list of osteopathic surgical programs. I feel very lucky to be getting in on the ground floor of what I feel will become the best osteopathic general surgery training program.


AP.......

Sorry I didnt write back sooner, but I was out of the country.
Thanks for your imput on Mercy. I will be attending DMU and I'm very interested in surgery, I hope to see you guys around town some time after July.