Welcome from the Program Director and Chair

We appreciate your interest in the Baptist General Surgery Residency Program sponsored by Baptist Memorial Medical Education. Our most important mission is to train clinically superior general surgeons that will be leaders in their communities. Our training will establish a foundation of excellence for clinical or academic practice, or for pursuit of fellowship training. We offer our base training “under one roof” in a tertiary and quaternary referral hospital that is a regional facility of expertise in multi-disciplinary surgical care. Other training sites include a busy rural surgery & endoscopic-based training at our Baptist hospital in Union County Mississippi, Burn and Plastic Surgery at our Baptist Hospital in Jackson, MS, as well as trauma and transplant rotations with our partners at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Collectively, these sites offer the candidate an extraordinary opportunity to take advantage of a high-volume surgical training program providing expertise in all areas of general surgery with early “hands on” operating room experience. Our didactic program complements the clinical experience with active and vested faculty involvement.

While a new program, our core faculty has decades of experience in surgical training and research in the principles and foundations of the practice of medicine and surgery. Our program will offer close, often one-to-one mentorship in the clinic, hospital and operating room. We believe in the early, rigorous immersion of surgical technique, patient ownership and knowledge-based practice in general surgery. Young surgeons will be challenged to exceed to the highest level through didactic teaching, research pursuits and progressive autonomy in the operating room.

With the start of the 2026 academic year, we welcome our first class of graduating Chief residents. This past year, through active research pursuits, our department had oral podium presentations at 6 National meetings. We are proud of the foundation we are building in our culture of medicine that exemplifies “getting better” every day.

We believe we offer a unique opportunity for the motivated future surgeon to learn, practice and operate with us in an environment of collegiality, mutual respect, responsibility, teamwork and fun. We welcome the opportunity for you to visit our campus to see what we do and how, but more importantly, why we do what we do to be the best we can be.

Sincerely,

Stephen W. Behrman, MD