Penn State Hershey is a modern 504-bed facility which provides a range of primary to quaternary medical services to a large catchment area in rural central Pennsylvania, spanning from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Patients present with a broad variety of problems ranging from common everyday neurosurgical conditions to the most complicated congenital, traumatic, and acquired diseases treated anywhere.

The Department of Neurosurgery is fortunate to have faculty with subspecialty training in all areas of neurosurgery to provide a broad and deep fund of knowledge to form the foundation of the residents’ clinical experience.

The clinical program is organized around four distinct services within the parent institution on the Penn State medical campus: three adult services, the Red Service (with an emphasis on cerebrovascular, endovascular, skull base and neuro-oncology), the Blue Service (with an emphasis on spine, peripheral nerve, stereotactic and functional neurosurgery), the White service (ICU and neurocritical care with an emphasis on neurosurgical trauma), and the Pediatric Service.  Structured rotations on each of these services provide both an exposure to a breadth of neurosurgical disease while at the same time emphasizing the clinical caseload and expertise of the individual faculty members on each service.

Educational conferences on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings expose residents to all disciplines of basic and clinical neuroscience.  Participation in multidisciplinary conferences with other specialties within the institution contributes to a sound educational experience for the residents.

Although structured, the Penn State Neurosurgery program is flexible enough to accommodate each trainee's individual educational needs and interests.  Residents are advanced to higher levels of responsibility based upon performance evaluations. Elective rotations are scheduled throughout the program, and decisions on how to best use elective time is determined on an individual basis based upon the resident’s interests and experience. Elective time may be spent either in the parent institution studying a subspecialty of neurosurgery or independent research (either clinical or basic science).

Residents are provided the opportunity to participate in a research activity during their residency, and time has been set aside during the rotations for this pursuit.  The department has a wealth of internal research opportunities in basic, translational, and clinical research in all areas of neurosurgery.  In addition, there are strong collaborations with researchers in other Penn State University departments both in the College of Medicine and the university as a whole.

We are located in a rural setting with easy access to major cities of the Eastern seaboard by a short car or train trip. Within Hershey itself, is a diverse array of activities including theatre, outdoor recreation, a sports plaza and indoor/outdoor pool complex, Zoo America, Hershey Park arena facilities, youth sports leagues, professional hockey, soccer and baseball, Hershey Gardens, museums and an outstanding public school system.

We appreciate your interest in our program and look forward to the opportunity to share with you our pride in Penn State Neurosurgery.

For more information regarding Penn State Hershey Neurosurgery residency training program, please email Lynne Hamann, residency program coordinator, at lhamann1@hmc.psu.edu.