Welcome from Our Chair

Welcome to the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Our mission is to provide patients with disorders of the brain, spine, or peripheral nerves with the highest quality of care, in a compassionate and comprehensive manner, provide a broad and innovative training program for future neurosurgeons and medical students, and expand the knowledge base of neurosurgery through innovative research aimed at improving outcomes in neurosurgery patients.

The faculty members making up our department have subspecialty training covering the breadth of neurosurgical disease. We have experts in Cerebrovascular Disease, Neuro-Oncology, Pediatric Neurosurgery, Skull Base, Spinal Disease, and Neurotrauma. In addition to our faculty, there are many other experts from across UMMC with whom we partner to provide our patients with the latest and most advanced methods in diagnosis and treatment.

In addition to our clinical care, we are extremely proud of our Neurosurgical Residency Program. Accredited since 1957, our program is the only neurosurgical training program within the state of Mississippi. We have successfully graduated around 60 residents since its beginning, and these graduates have gone on to have extremely successful neurosurgical careers across the United States. We currently have 11 residents within our program being trained across the wide spectrum of neurosurgery.

We are a team of individuals bound together to provide high quality and compassionate neurosurgical care for Mississippi’s most complex patients often with life threatening conditions. We value the humanity of all of our patients and partner with them and their families in their healthcare. The values at the core of the Neurosurgery Department are:

• Community: For us Mississippi is our home and as such each patient is a member of our extended family for whom we will provide the best, highest quality of care.
• Confidence, Humility: We have extreme confidence in our abilities and skills to provide optimal treatment for our patients, which in turn our patients feel confident they are receiving the best care. We treat each person, whether they are a patient, family member, nurse, resident, and/or attending, with the highest levels of empathy, patience, and good manners.
• Being Present, Engaged, and Responsive: Our patients and colleagues will always feel supported by the Department of Neurosurgery. With all of our interactions, our goal is to be actively engaged such that we are appropriately responding to the needs of our patients, students, staff, and colleagues.
• Gratitude: For many of our patients, their experiences with Neurosurgery are directly related to some of the most difficult times in their lives. We will be grateful to have the opportunity to care and support them in their times of need. We will express our gratitude to our colleagues and teammates as they support us in our efforts.

Thank you for your interest in our department. If we can be of any assistance to you, we ask that you please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Sincerely,

Chad W. Washington MS, MD, MPHS
Chair and Associate Professor
Department of Neurosurgery