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ENT residents start Houston Methodist Hospital tradition

Houston Methodist this summer welcomed its inaugural class of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery residents to the City of Houston in what is the first addition of a new ENT residency program to the Texas Medical Center in the past 50 years. Although a new program for the institution, the residents will experience the depth of learning and history from one of the nation's top hospitals as well as state-of-the-art training facilities and technology. Click here to read a Q& A with the Class of 2027 residents.

"A new program always brings the excitement and buzz about it and the positive energy of starting something new," says Nadia Mohyuddin, MD, FACS, residency program director. "They (the new residents) will be ambassadors of Methodist's ENT program and how we do it at Houston Methodist, helping us build our footprint and tradition for the many years to come.” Houston Methodist Otolaryngology Department received ACGME approval in late January 2022 for two new residents each year for the next five years, thus creating the 2027 inaugural class. Program leaders received more than 70 applications, interviewed 20 and decided on two. Kayla Powell comes to Houston from Indiana University School of Medicine and Franklin Wu from Keck School of Medicine, USC. "We could tell these were top-notch students," Dr. Mohyuddin said. “We also were looking at inclusion and diversity for our inaugural class members."

Nadia Mohyuddin, MD, FACS, residency program director

Kayla Powell came with top quality letters of recommendation and mature responses. Like Dr. Mohyuddin, she will be a female in the surgical field that still is dominated by men. "She has a lot of grit," Dr. Mohyuddin said, adding that Dr. Powell is the first in her family to attend college, let alone go on to medical school. Franklin Wu, is a member of the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) medical honor society and is well published, including an article on telemedicine for laryngology-related complaints during COVID-19 — an area where the Houston Methodist department focuses and hopes to make future strides. "Creating an ENT residency program opened our eyes to the unique quality we would have in developing our training from the ground up, start to finish, with the way of learning from Methodist Hospital," Dr. Mohyuddin said, where professionals, scientists and experts at the top hospital have honed and improved training programs, clinical and surgical techniques and medical decision making for more than 100 years. Dr. Powell and Dr. Wu officially begin in July. Rotations will include The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center where residents will focus on cancer at the nation’s top-ranked hospital for cancer treatment and a leader in proton therapy research. They also will rotate into Memorial Hermann Hospital and UTMB Galveston where they will manage both adult and pediatric head and neck trauma, as well as care for pediatric otolaryngology patients. At UTMB Galveston, they will study ENT concerns in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison population. Managed care in the Texas prison system is the largest in the country and includes innovative programs for telemedicine and electronic medical records, an area of focus for Methodist even before COVID-19 made the practice imperative. Methodist’s inaugural ENT residents will have the opportunity to work alongside residents on rotations from these same institutions as well as residents from Baylor College of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology. “This will be a homegrown institutional collaboration within the Texas Medical Center,” Dr. Mohyuddin said. The department’s new ENT residency program will join in the regular match program next year and in years to come. Residents also will have the benefit of training at the Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation and Education (MITIE), a 35,000-square-feet virtual training hospital and hands-on clinical training facility. Its educational mission is focused on enabling residents to acquire new procedural skills and learn new technology. MITIE contains three essential elements housed under one roof – a virtual hospital, a procedural skills lab and a core of research operating rooms. The research core incubates technology advances and innovative ideas including focus on training and uses of robotic surgery and image-guided procedures. Also unique to the Houston Methodist residency program is robot-assisted surgery with the da Vinci Surgical system. These new research ideas and procedures evolve to the simulated patient care environment, then procedural protocols are defined, and efficacy is either proven or sent back to the drawing board for improvement. Techniques and competencies that pass through into best practices eventually are disseminated to actual patient practice. “It’s exciting to bring a new training program to the Texas Medical Center that integrates excellence in education, research and innovation,” Dr. Mohyuddin said.