Navy Medical Center News

By Luke Balsamo, MD
Program Director
Naval Medical Center Portsmouth

The orthopaedic residency at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth continues to successfully train new orthopaedic surgeons to meet the challenge of a military practice. We would like to welcome our new PGY-2 residents. Drs. John Cancian, Chihua Lee and Rehan Dawood matriculated straight from their intern year and Dr. Amy Ostrofe returned from a three year flight surgery tour. Our new chiefs, Drs. Dominic Van Nielen, Jake Hall, and David Feaker have all stepped up to assume greater roles of responsibility.

Our recent graduates have moved onto positions in the fleet taking care of our sailors and marines. Drs. Mike Pullen and Brian Mannino are stationed in Yokosuka, Dr. Tim Frazier is in Rota, Spain and Dr. Robert Boatwright is on his way to Camp Lejeune. Our program received good news after the latest boards cycle. All passed! This makes 19 years of a 100% ABOS Part I and 21 years of a 100% ABOS Part II pass rate. Congratulations to our residents.

Research continues to be an important part of our program. Currently there are over 30 IRB approved projects underway. In 2015, the department authored over 15 articles and book chapters and we are on pace to do the same in 2016. Dr. Chris Smith has taken over as Research Coordinator for the Department as was recently awarded a $500,000 DHA research grant to study fracture fixation. Great job!

We remain one of the busiest orthopaedic departments in DoD, seeing over 80,000 outpatient visits a year and performing over 5000 surgeries. We couldn’t do this without our dedicated civilian and military support staff and the hard work of our residents. We look forward to a robust presence at the 2017 VOS meeting in Charlottesville, VA.