Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital (SBCH), part of the not-for-profit Cottage Health System, was founded in 1888, and has grown to be the largest hospital on the central coast of California. SBCH has one of the oldest surgical training programs in the western United States; the surgical residency program was instituted in 1921, and has been fully approved since 1944, shortly after the founding of the American Board of Surgery. The residency is a five-year program, approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, The American Board of Surgery, and the American College of Surgeons through the Residency Review Committee.
Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital is a 465-bed community hospital. The comprehensive surgical teaching program at SBCH is structured to provide progressive surgical education as well as clinical and laboratory research experience. The general surgery residents are able to acquire a variety of experiences and procedures covering the broad base of general surgery. General Surgery encompasses vascular, oncologic, gastrointestinal, thoracic, endocrine, pediatric, and colorectal surgery, and trauma and surgical critical care. Training and experience are also provided in plastic, urologic, gynecologic, orthopedic, and neurologic surgery. The residency program provides a balance between patient-oriented activity in the clinics, on the ward, in the operating room, and in the intensive care unit.
The categorical surgical residency is a five-year program. The program matches for two categorical general surgical residents per year. In addition, there are three non-categorical R1 positions.
For many years the residency was a joint program with the Santa Barbara County General Hospital. The County Hospital no longer admits inpatients, but a close affiliation with the residency program continues. The County operates a network of clinics, with the County Hospital serving as the central structure. The surgery and surgical specialty clinics are staffed by residents from the program, with the supervision of attending physicians. All County patients requiring hospitalization are admitted to SBCH, providing continuity of resident care. In addition, a large number of private surgical patients are an integral part of the surgical teaching program. Affiliated hospitals also play an important role in the surgical residency, including Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center (trauma), and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (transplantation).
The surgical attending staff at SBCH represent a wide diversity of backgrounds, providing a rich variety of training experience for the residents. Because of the small size of the program, an unusually close relationship exists between the house staff and the attending surgeons. Kenneth Waxman, MD, was named program director in 1995, succeeding Dr. George Higgins. Dr. Waxman comes from a successful academic background, having recently been Professor of Surgery at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. David Thoman, the assistant program director, joined the faculty in 2004.
In 2004, the Residency Review Committee for Surgery (American Board of Surgery) conducted a site visit of our general surgery residency program. The RRC's evaluation resulted in a continued four-year accreditation. This outstanding evaluation is one measure of the quality of our program, faculty, staff, and residents that we attract to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
