UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine-UCLA Medical Center Program

Program Identity & Fit

UCLA's integrated vascular surgery program is an academic, quaternary-anchored 0+5 pathway built around Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a high-acuity referral hub for the southwest US, with additional experience spanning a community hospital (Santa Monica), a safety-net county-style facility (Olive View) offering unusual early autonomy, and the West LA VA where chief residents run their own service. The five-year structure integrates core general surgery in early years with 36 months of dedicated vascular training and a mandatory one-year research block, signaling that scholarly output is a formal, structured expectation rather than an optional add-on. The breadth of sites - from tertiary open/endovascular complexity to community and underserved settings - suggests the program values residents comfortable moving fluidly between high-resource academic care and safety-net responsibility. The program explicitly emphasizes diversity of trainees and patients as core to its identity in a multicultural Los Angeles setting.