Department of Surgery

W. Roy Smythe, M.D. Professor and Chairman

Welcome to the Scott & White Memorial Hospital / Texas A&M University Health Science Center College of Medicine Department of Surgery.

Scott & White Memorial Hospital actually traces its origins to an 1895 surgical partnership between Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott and Dr. Raleigh R. White.  During its 110-year history, this institution has grown to become one of the largest health systems in the country.  More than 550 physicians care for patients at the Scott & White Memorial Hospital academic medical center as well as at our 15 regional facilities around the state.

The Department of Surgery faculty consists of more than 80 surgeons representing a variety of specialties and subspecialties as well as a number of full-time basic and translational scientists.  Accredited postgraduate residency training positions are available in General Surgery, Plastic Surgery, Orthopedics, Urology, Ophthalmology and Podiatry, and the primacy of resident education is protected by limiting competing subspecialty fellowship training positions.  We also value the importance of medical student education, and offer a number of advanced clerkship rotations in addition to the standard third year surgical curriculum.

A new $140 million state of the art clinical addition – the Center for Advanced Medicine is being constructed. This facility will add approximately 500,000 square foot of clinical space to our campus, and will house the new surgical intensive care unit, Trauma Center and Cardiovascular Institute.

In addition to continued commitment to patient-centered care, a true “academic renewal” is taking place on the clinical campus here in Temple, Texas. Our research programs are growing, and the Division of Surgical Research is a significant participant in this effort with federally funded active programs in vascular biology, experimental oncology and molecular and gene therapeutics. The nationally recognized Cardiovascular Research Institute is located at the recently renovated Central Texas Veterans Health Care System - Olin E Teague Veterans' Center. This is the fourth largest V.A. in the country, and also serves as our primary postgraduate and medical school clinical surgical teaching affiliate.

We are all fortunate to be involved in the practice of medicine at this time in history as exciting advances in biomedical science promise to be translated into more effective clinical care in many areas. We will utilize this information for continual quality improvement in the clinic and at the bedside, as well as to prepare our trainees for the future of surgical practice. We will also contribute to this growing body of useful biomedical knowledge as basic, translational and clinical investigators. We are uniquely positioned to do all these things in the Scott & White/Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine Department of Surgery, and the coming years hold great promise.

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