Message from the Chief

Welcome to the University of California, San Francisco - East Bay General Surgery Residency Program  

In 1990, the East Bay Program was formed from a merging of three surgical residencies:  Alameda County Medical Center, Naval Hospital in Oakland, and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.  Claude H Organ, Jr, MD presided over the early maturation of our program and masterfully supervised the transition in 2001 from sponsorship by the University of California, Davis to the geographically more accessible University of California, San Francisco.  The program is currently led by alumni of the residency, Dr Barnard Palmer, who trained under Dr Organ.  Dr Palmer is committed to surgical education and innovations to improve the residents’ training experience.  

​Residency Program

The Program Director is Barnard Palmer, MD, with supportive Associate Program Directors in Javid Sadjadi, MD,  Emily Miraflor, MD, and Leslie Wong, MD. The Residency Review Committee (RRC) for Surgery scrutinizes residency programs and, depending upon their assessment, approves programs for three to five years of approval.  In part because of the stability of the program, as we move into our 30 year as the East Bay Surgical residency program, we have continued to be granted 5-year, and now 10-year review cycles, a testament to the strength and stability of the program.

The two biggest jumps in any surgeon’s life are from 4th year of medical school to internship and from chief residency into the real world.  At UCSF-East Bay, our aim is to put each resident in the best possible position to master both of these transitions.

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Our Residents

Our program is composed of a diverse group of 52 surgical residents including preliminary interns.  We graduate seven chief residents annually.  We envision ourselves as training surgeons for both academic/fellowships and/or private practice careers.  Similarly, we offer rotations at a large county hospital, a Veterans Medical Center, a comprehensive managed care Kaiser Hospital system, the Benioff Oakland Children's Hospital, and the Mount Zion and Parnassus Campuses of UCSF Medical Center; thus, instead of just hearing about the joys associated with surgical practice in various venues, our surgical residents are immersed in rotations representing each of the surgical environments that they are likely to select for their practice of choice. 

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Resident Research

We acknowledge that surgical research is not for everyone.  Here at UCSF-East Bay, we have the unique capability of offering two years of surgical research experience, if the resident is interested in such a course of training. These are coveted research positions that the residents must earn. Approximately two-thirds of our residents are awarded two research years. 

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A Wealth of Surgical Experience 

The UCSF-East Bay program does not have surgical fellows. As such, our chief residents are doing the most complex cases, one-on-one with our surgical faculty. This arrangement is something we are quite proud of and feel it is a critical advantage in training top surgical residents. The UCSF-East Bay General Surgery Residency Program is dedicated to providing the best surgical training anywhere.