Nebraska had recent faculty change, and some information that needed to be updated......so here it is!
University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) 6 Year OMFS Program
6-year program, 2 residents per year, no non-cats
Program overview: UNMC is the oldest dual degree program where Dr. Davis, former program director, trained and became one of the first dual degree oral surgeons in the country. This history makes OMFS very stable and with a strong presence at the medical center. STEP 1 is taken anytime between Matching with us (January) and start of residency (July 1st). This essentially completes the 1st and 2nd years of med school which is also unique to our program.
Year 1: Fairly typical intern year with the exception of a few things that make our intern year standout. You do all local procedures at our different clinics, assist in the OR 1-2 days/week, and facilitate OR cases for the upper levels. Trauma call is handled by OMFS, ENT, and Plastics. Trauma call is Monday at 8 am to Monday at 8 am. ENT and OMFS alternate trauma every week and Plastics participates every 5th week so the majority of trauma is handled by OMFS/ENT. Tooth call is 24/7 OMFS with GPR handling vestibular abscesses and splinting teeth. As interns Tooth call is split by weeks at a time and trauma week is alternated each day between the two interns, as trauma tends to be busy.
We have 4 clinics (LOC, VP, VA, and Creighton) and the interns are assigned different clinics every week. UNMC covers Creighton dental school for OMFS coverage. Interns are responsible for Creighton coverage MWF. Creighton is a hidden gem at our program. It’s set up like a private practice so as an intern your cases will be Tee’d up and all you do is place the IV, run moderate sedation, and take out thirds/pathology/Full mouths. The learning curve is steep but by the 2nd or 3rd month you become much more confident removing fully bony impacted wisdom teeth.
As interns we cut cases when the attendings feel we’re ready. Orthognathics is our bread and butter and it is not uncommon to cut 5-10 Leforts/Sagittals by the end of intern year. Intern year is still the hardest year of residency but between Creighton and placing implants at the VA, everyone survives.
Year 2: Typical third-year med student with required clerkships. 6 weeks ob/gyn, 6 weeks psych, 8 weeks internal medicine, 8 weeks general surgery, 6 weeks pediatrics, 6 weeks family med. You have all the standard breaks as a medical student so most enjoy this year to catch your breath after intern year. You are not on service this entire year with tuition costing ~35K as in instate resident. This is the only year you do not receive house officer pay. Residents take STEP II at the end of this year.
Year 3: Fourth year of medical school. We pay for a full year of tuition again (35K) but we do receive half of the year’s house officer pay (~30K) during this year. You complete your med school with 4 months on OMFS service and 4 months on anesthesia, 1 month research, and 3 months to spend how you like. The 3 months you earn during med school is nice in that you can shape it however you’d like. Some of our resident’s shadow fellowships during this time or just take a nice break from residency and feel what it’s like to have a life outside residency. During service as a upper level you’ll be on call Q4-5, with interns being first call. You also spend more time in clinics where you’ll be running all of the morning sedations, if not, sharing it with the senior resident. You spend ~1-2 days/week in the OR and many times will be just you and the attending.
Year 4: Gen surg year, arguably the hardest year of residency. 2 months trauma, 1 month Neurosurgery, 1 month pediatric surgery, 1 month pediatric anesthesia, 2 months craniofacial surgery, 1 month medicine/neuro ICU, 1 month plastics, 1 month Vascular, 1 month EGS, and 1 month thoracic surgery.
At the end of this year, our grads receive a 12 month General surgery certificate (not “credits” ). We haven’t had any alumni who’ve faced difficulty receiving medical licensure.
Year 5: 6 months OMFS, 3 months Craniofacial surgery, and 3 months Head and Neck Surgery. Head and neck is another hidden gem at UNMC. We operate at Methodist with a well-established surgical team where we purely operate cutting half of the case. Most residents consider the head and neck portion an outstanding aspect of our program. The other 3 months are spent on Craniofacial with Dr. Miller performing cranial vault reconstruction, cleft lip and palate repair and ear reconstruction. These 3 months on craniofacial are fairly unique to UNMC. Dr. Miller is OMFS and Plastics trained. Additionally, we spend a large amount of time 5th and 6th year with Dr. Desa as part of the craniofacial team performing alveolar cleft bone grafts and maxillofacial/mandibular distractions.
Year 6: 12 months as chief resident on service with 6-10 sedations every clinic morning and 2-3 days in the operating room. The attendings expect you to run the service managing the interns and being first assist. It is common to see chiefs and senior residents cutting full cases while attendings just guide them.
Total: 34 months of OMS, 5 months of Craniofacial, 3 months of H&N, 9 months of Gen Surg, 5 months of Anesthesia, 12 months of medical school, 1 month of research and 3 months to spend time with your family/friends, shadow fellowships, or find a new hobby.
The nice thing about our program is how approachable our attendings are. If the residents’ plans are to do more cosmetics, orthognathic, or H&N then Dr. Desa will work with us early on to create a schedule that is conducive to our success in whatever our residents choose (given that it’s within reason).
Scope: Full scope with heavy Orthognathic, TMJ, Benign path, Cosmetics, Reconstruction and Dentoalveolar. Your craniofacial is with Dr. Miller and Malignant path with at Methodist with the H&N group. Our chiefs, on average, have performed >500 major OR procedures each (not including OR dentoalveolar). Our attendings are well recognized in the area, and have strong referrals with OR cases booked out 5-6 months in advance. With the recent addition of Bellevue medical center, we now have the full week with blocked OR time for OMFS.
Call: Tooth 24/7 with interns on primary call alternating each week and GPR to cover all the non-fascial space related abscesses. Trauma every other week except the 5th week. The interns alternate each day during trauma call, and we do a power weekend so that 1 intern gets the weekend off to rest/recharge which alternates.
Didactics: Case conference every Wednesday morning with Chiefs primarily presenting complex/unique cases they operated on with an educational session at the end of each case. Biweekly Implant lectures from Dr. Tucker who was part of a successful private practice before moving back to Nebraska (we have Nobel, Straumann, and 3I reps come and present as well). Friday mornings the residency didactics rotates between surgical approaches with patient mgmt and Pathology lectures. The interns also have a class (for the first 2 months) with Dr. Untrauer who will teach them how to perform a thorough H&P. Monthly journal club meetings that are usually more casual with residents and attendings hanging out and speaking on any one particular topic that the residents are interested in.
Research: Encouraged but not heavily emphasized.
Other Perks: $10/day for lunch (including wknds), $300 provided each year for educational expenses for textbooks or whatever you want to buy, and $150/month at the VA for food. The program also awards 15 credits for any resident who wants to enroll in undergraduate classes at UNL; UNK; UNO; or UNMC. Loupes are paid for by the department of surgery, so free loupes!
Externship: Nebraska isn’t a place where most people of dream of being, but this view quickly changes whenever we’ve had externs come out to hang with us for a week or two. We frequently place our externs in ORs whenever possible to see the attending/resident relationship firsthand and even scrub in on these cases. Externs who are D3’s or D4’s will also take cases in the OR where they scrub in and get to extract with the intern.
Externs are also given their own badge and have $10/day for food allowance. I'll repeat, YOU GET $10/DAY for food and free lodging at UNMC. The residents who've matched here have all externed and enjoyed the atmosphere and culture at UNMC.
Hospitals/Clinics:
Lauritzen Outpatient center (LOC): Main clinic at UNMC, newly constructed in 2015.
Village Point clinic (VP): West Omaha with private practice feel.
Boystown National Research hospital: This is where Dr. Desa attends craniofacial clinic with residents (typically chief/senior residents). This is also where senior residents will rotate with Dr. Miller and operate solo with him on craniofacial reconstruction and much more.
Bellevue Medical Center: 10 minutes from main campus, this the latest hospital we operate at, and so now we have OR blocks all 5 days of the week, including add-ons for the weekends.
VA: 3 blocks from main campus UNMC. Dentoalveolar with vast majority of implants being done here (including zygos). All residents place implants at the VA with the majority being guided. Chiefs will typically place anywhere between 10-15 zygomatic implants by the end of the year. We do most of our cosmetics here as well, with chiefs having done >30 cases of blepharoplasties and eyebrow lifts by the end of the year.
Creighton dental school: Interns only for IV sedation, 3rds, full mouths, and helping dental students who struggle with extractions.
Omaha impression:
Best zoo in the country, clean city with tons of food and a great night scene with places like old market, capitol district, Bensen, and Blackstone district. The winters are cold but the hospital has a sky tunnel that can be used from the parking garage to any corner in the hospital.
College world series is a great time in the summer, where NCAA baseball teams compete for the championship for 3 weeks and basically all of downtown is converted to a bar. College football is huge here with the Cornhuskers leading the front. Iowa, Iowa state, OU, K state are all within driving range if you want to experience the Midwest college football craze. Kansas City is 2 hours away where you can dabble around the NFL with the chiefs or the MLB with the royals. Housing is affordable with most residents owning a nice home, backyard, and a garage.
We all get along and have fun together. This is a non-malignant program where residents and attendings regularly spend time together. If you visit our program you’ll see the mutual respect between residents and attendings. Come out and extern to see if for yourself.
Program Director:
Valmont Desa, DDS, MD, FACS
Dr. Desa trained at UNMC and has been involved here ever since. Dr. Desa’s happy place is in the operating room with the residents. He is known throughout Nebraska and receives orthognathic referrals from throughout the Midwest. Dr. Desa loves barbeque and will smoke just about anything.
UNMC Attendings:
Jason Untrauer, DDS, MD, FACS
Dr. Untrauer trained at UCONN and has been at UNMC ever since. Dr. Untrauer is energetic and loves to operate. He is always willing to try new things if a resident has done the leg work and researched different approaches.
Karen Tucker, DDS, MD, FACS
Dr. Tucker finished training at UNMC and did private practice and has since returned to the program. Dr. Tucker is our attending who has brought more private practice experience and helps residents feel extremely comfortable with implants, implant planning, and all-on-four cases.
Adam Robinson, DMD, MD
Dr. Robinson was not only a previous resident at UNMC but is now our newest junior attending. Considering he just graduated, he is hungry and is ready to take on new surgical cases. With his interest in benign pathology, cosmetics, orthognathic, TMJ, and large reconstructions he has quickly ramped up his practice and continuing to grow and is a big advocate for the residents.
Jason Miller, MD, DDS (Full-time Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery)
Dr. Miller is dual board certified in PRS and OMFS. He also is fellowship trained in craniofacial reconstruction and well established in the region, gaining referrals from all over the country. Dr. Miller is full-time faculty for the PRS program at UNMC but frequently interacts with the OMFS residents, and even takes call with OMFS, when our attendings are on vacation. The senior residents value their time with Dr. Miller, as they operate solo with him, and gain the surgical skills and knowledge to work with cleft lip/palate, craniosynostosis, the occasional BBL, and much more.
Creighton Attendings:
Terry Lanphier, DDS
Dr. Lanphier is a passionate and caring exodontist, that has assumed the role and responsibility of Interim OMFS chair at Creighton University SOD. Though he is currently the Interim, he has been serving in this department for >15 yrs is invested helping the intern grow their surgical skills. He is very laid back and easy to talk to, and loves to take the residents to creighton basketball games as he is a proud season ticket holder!
Tod Rajchel, DDS
Dr. Rajchel is a dental anesthesiologist and also has some background knowledge in OMS, as he himself was an OMS resident before deciding to pursue Dental Anesthesiology. When interns first start at Creighton, Dr. Rajchel will run through moderate sedation with you, and will give you a better understanding of the planes of sedation, and how to manage the airway during your workflow.
