The Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation was founded in 1962 by J. William Hillman, M.D., the department's first chairman. Prior to that time, it was a section of the General Surgery Department of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Following Dr. Hillman's death in 1970, Paul P. Griffin, M.D. chaired the Department for the succeeding decade.

Dr. Dan M. Spengler has been Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation since 1983. There are currently 23 full-time orthopaedic, attending faculty positions and six auxiliary faculty positions in the department, twenty-one resident positions and five orthopaedic fellowship positions. Ten orthopaedic surgeons from the Nashville area serve on the clinical faculty.

The residency program consists of four years of specialized orthopaedic training preceded by a one-year internship in general surgery, spent in the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt.

During the orthopaedic training program, residents rotate through two teaching hospitals staffed by full-time faculty. The Vanderbilt University Hospital complex is a tertiary referral center for the Mid-South area with 633 beds. Two thousand five hundred orthopaedic patients are admitted annually to Vanderbilt University Hospital. Orthopaedic Surgery at Vanderbilt has an average daily hospital census of 26 inpatients and more than 60,000 orthopaedic outpatient visits per year. Approximately 5,000 patients are seen annually by the Orthopaedic Service in the emergency room.

The Veterans Administration Medical Center, adjacent to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has 485 beds (including 439 acute care beds) and an active ambulatory care clinic treating 3,502 orthopaedic outpatients annually. About 381 orthopaedic procedures are performed yearly while 286 orthopaedic patients are admitted to VAMC each year.

 Contact us!

Vanderbilt Orthopaedic Institute
Medical Center East, South Tower
Nashville, TN 37232-8774

Susan Laux
615-343-6364
615-343-9463 (Fax)
susan.laux@vanderbilt.edu