CLEVELAND — Dr. Christopher Brandt has a love for surgery.

"There's obviously a technical component that's very satisfactory. You see anatomy up close and personal and it's an area where the patient is putting a lot of trust into your abilities and your skills," said Brandt, who is the chair of the Department of Surgery at MetroHealth.

Brandt has been a surgeon for over 30 years and enjoys helping new surgeons with their careers.

"It's a great field. I encourage everybody to go into surgery. As I mentioned it's a special relationship with the patient. You have an opportunity to identify a problem and solve it and then take care of it."

That's why he's looking forward to the start of MetroHealth's surgical residency program.

This isn't the hospital's first surgical residency program but it is replacing a program that recently ended.

The program just received full accreditation and will begin this summer.

"From a system standpoint, it attracts and retains excellent faculty and the residents are a significant part of the care that's delivered to our patients and to our community."

Brandt said programs like this one are needed as there is a shortage of residency programs for medical students across the country.

"It's true in many areas of medicine and part of the response from nationally has been that the medical schools in the United States have been over several years  increasing the number of graduates that there are from the medical schools. The problem is there has not been a similar increase in the residency spots that are available. So you may be increasing the pipeline at the medical school level but if you don't increase the pipeline at the residency level you're not going to ultimately meet the workforce requirements," he said.

MetroHealth is now accepting applications from medical students for the surgical residency program.  

Their goal is to give residents a chance to practice at a public hospital in an urban setting.

MetroHealth Medical Center also offers 50 other residency programs.