Cleveland Clinic Foundation-Akron General Program

Program Identity & Fit

This is a hybrid academic/community-based, five-year orthopaedic surgery residency at a Level I Trauma Center in Akron, OH, affiliated with Cleveland Clinic and NEOMED, offering a broad general orthopaedic training experience across the full range of subspecialties, including seven months of dedicated pediatric orthopaedic training at nearby Akron Children's Hospital. The program explicitly states it does not train subspecialty fellows, and its stated mission is to produce graduates "competitive for entry into general orthopaedic practice or application for subspecialty fellowship training," with only two dedicated research months embedded in a curriculum otherwise weighted toward high clinical/trauma volume. A structured biomechanics laboratory (led by a PhD engineer with NEOMED and Johns Hopkins appointments) provides research infrastructure, but the program frames research as teaching "achievable goals" rather than positioning it as central to identity. Distinctive features include daily 7-8am didactics rotating through subspecialty and evidence-based topics, funded attendance at named subspecialty courses each PGY year (e.g., OTA Fracture Course, AANA Arthroscopy, CCJR), cadaveric skills labs, and a longitudinal-plus-rotation-based structure emphasizing broad clinical competency over narrow academic subspecialization.