Many people will advise you not to get sick in July — and certainly not to go to an emergency department over the summer. According to that old tale, summer is when freshly minted residents with little or no experience are charged with learning their specialties by practicing on real patients. I can tell you after decades in neurosurgery that this is not the case! As we enter the new academic year, our patients receive care not just from our faculty members, experienced physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, but also by dedicated young neurosurgeons, most likely in their sixth or seventh year of residency, with the kind of experience that only New York City can provide. I wouldn’t wish a trip to the ED on anyone, of course, but I assure you that if fate brings you to us over the summer, you are in good hands.
This month we send our two graduates out into the professional world, more than ready to become independent practitioners. Dr. Joseph Carnevale has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and he will be practicing as an endovascular and cerebrovascular neurosurgeon at New Jersey Brain and Spine. Dr. Jacob Goldberg will be joining Metropolitan Neurosurgery Associates, a private practice with offices in Manhattan, Westchester, and New Jersey. I know their seven years here probably felt very long to them (and I remember that feeling all too well), but it seems like the blink of an eye to me and to the faculty members here who have been working with them all these years. We all wish Joey and Jake the very best, and we have every confidence that they will provide excellent care to their patients.
As we send our graduates out into the world, we welcome our two newest PGY-1’s, Lily McLaughlin, MD, of Georgetown University School of Medicine and David Sykes, MD, of Duke University School of Medicine. They will begin their rotations through the many areas of neurological surgery, learning at the side of senior residents and attendings. These are two highly promising young neurosurgeons-in-training, and I look forward to guiding them toward the amazing careers that are no doubt in store for them. In several years (not this summer!), they may be at your bedside, and you will have every reason to have confidence in them.
In between our graduates and our incoming residents, we have a truly accomplished team of young neurosurgeons who are not only skilled surgeons but also innovative researchers. At our recent graduation dinner, we honored two of them for their research, with winning publications chosen from a remarkable roster of creative abstracts and research articles. (See Dr. Tosi Wins 2024 Apuzzo Award and Dr. Larsen Wins 2024 Gaposchkin Award.) We also honored Dr. Kai-Ming Fu for excellence in teaching our residents. I am so proud of all of them.
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