University of Washington Program

Program Identity & Fit

The University of Washington Integrated Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency is a high-acuity, academic 6-year i6 pathway built around the tertiary/quaternary referral mission of UW Medical Center, VA Puget Sound, and Seattle Children's Hospital, serving the entire WWAMI region and producing graduates with roughly 1575 total cases and exposure to over 1000 lung and 900 heart transplants. The program explicitly rejects tracking, training residents as full-spectrum cardiac-and-thoracic surgeons capable of practice in either academic or community settings, with a distinctive community-immersion rotation at Kootenai Health in Idaho to simulate non-academic practice. Structurally, residents gain graduated autonomy from PGY-1, operating "on the surgeon's side of the table from day one" and working alongside CT surgery fellows in the senior years across congenital, transplant, mechanical circulatory support, and complex thoracic oncologic disease. The department's broader research infrastructure (SORCE, T32 trauma fellowship, esophageal outcomes fellowship) signals institutional research strength, but the CT-Integrated program itself frames research as supportive of technical mastery rather than as its central identity, prioritizing operative volume, technical independence, and readiness for either academic or private-practice careers.