Contacts:

Surgery Clerkship Directors: Dr. Isabella Kuo (ijkuo@hs.uci.edu) and Dr. Oliver Eng (oeng@hs.uci.edu)
Medical Student Coordinator: Staci Reichenecker, reichens@uci.edu

The following steps are required to gain access to the UC Irvine Operating Rooms to observe surgeries as a preclerkship student:

Find a sponsor (faculty member) in a surgical field that interests you, and have the faculty e-mail the Medical Student Coordinator and the Surgery Clerkship Director, to inform them that they will be sponsoring you. This sponsor is the person who you will be accompanying in the operating room.
Once you have a sponsor, email the Medical Student Coordinator to schedule or verify completion of an operating room orientation. This is now done online, if you choose, and many of you already completed it during the MS1 early clinical experience. If you did not complete the video orientation previously, or if you prefer to come and do an in-person orientation, the medical student coordinator will help you do so. If you have already completed it, please verify your status with the coordinator.
After you complete the OR orientation, simply schedule a date and time to observe with your sponsor.
On the day of your observation experience, please proceed to the OR front desk and identify yourself as a UCI medical student scheduled to observe a case with your faculty sponsor. They will have surgical scrubs at the desk for you to change into. At the completion of the experience, please leave your scrubs in the hampers in the OR.

Revised on 08/12/22. Approved by MEDED Dean's Cabinet.