The Department of Surgery at National Taiwan University Hospital has a long history of being at the forefront of education, research, and clinical care and seek to improve in all areas of endeavor every year. The department serves as one of the major referral center in Taiwan, caring more than 15,000 inpatients per year. The department currently staffs 341 general beds plus 50 ICU beds and a burn center. There are approximately 50 full-time hospital–based faculty members and 66 practicing physicians who hold faculty appointments. The department also trains over 65 residents and fellows through residency programs in various divisions.
The department consists of 7 divisions. Each of which maintains a distinct profile of patients care, research and teaching. The department encompasses division of cardiovascular surgery, thoracic surgery, neurosurgery, general surgery, pediatric surgery, plastic surgery and colorectal surgery. These divisions provides preoperative evaluation, operative and nonoperative management and postoperative care for patients with the widest variety of surgical disorders. Each year, more than 10,000 operative procedures are completed. The mission of the department is to provide excellent patient care in an environment that stimulates its faculty, trainees and students to constantly improve their patient care, teaching, learning and investigation abilities.
In the area of patient care, the department continues to demonstrate excellence and national leadership in many areas, including open heart surgery, vascular surgery, hepatobiliary-pancrease surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, breast surgery, neurosurgery, thoracic surgery and organ transplantation. Many efforts has been done to improve the outcome of the surgical patients. For example: ECMO was used to support a patient with heart failure before or after heart surgery; mini-laparoscope was used to minimize the wound and discomfort of patients receiving laparoscopic surgery; endoscopic technique was used in the field of neurosurgery to shorten the recovery time of the patients.
In the past, the department was known for its outstanding clinical base, featuring excellence in clinical care and teaching and was less prominent in the areas of clinical and basic research. Over the past few years, however, the department has increased dramatically the quality and quantity of its research effort. With about 24,000,000 NT dollars research grants more than 110 papers were published last year. A committee governing the usage of surgical laboratory was established last year. This help the staffs to do their research more easily and efficiently. The department now has laboratories for transplantation immunology, cell culture, molecular biology, animal experiment, pathology and physiology. Cooperation with other department in the medical school is encouraged to extend the field of surgical research. With respect to research opportunities, the department change the resident training course of some divisions for they can participate in a one or two year research program focused on the topic they are interested in.
In the area of teaching, the department has grew as significantly as the area of clinical service and research. The department present more than 10 conferences and seminars per week in different division which are opened to anyone who wishing to participate. A core course of 100 important surgical topics was designed for the 5th year medical student since 1998, which help the student to be familiar to the basic knowledge of surgery. One to one teaching gives the students more chances to know the problems which may be encountered during clinical services. Efforts to increase the number of affiliated hospitals provide student and resident chances of training in different kinds of surgical subjects.
