DHMC's Neurosurgery Residency program follows a general surgery internship. Instruction follows graduated progression through increasing levels of technical proficiency, intellectual growth, and clinical responsibility, culminating in twelve months as chief resident. By the final year of training, the resident has acquired a broad education, is capable of teaching medical students and junior residents, and is able to operate with confidence across the full range of neurosurgical disorders.

Residents in this program are held to the highest professional standards and are respectfully treated as colleagues.

Residents spend all of the clinical neurosurgical rotations at DHMC and care for the majority of neurosurgical patients at DHMC, where there is also a Neurosurgical Step Down Unit. Patients who are critically ill are cared for in a combined Medical and Surgical Intensive Care Unit in conjunction with a multidisciplinary team of intensivists.

The program was started in 1947 by Dr. Henry Heyl, later the editor of the Journal of Neurosurgery. With a mission to provide the highest level of academic and clinical teaching, the program has proudly graduated neurosurgeons who have been successful across a wide range of endeavors. Sited at Dartmouth Medical School, the nation's fourth oldest, and the new campus of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the academic flagship of a progressive regional health care system, the program enjoys state-of-the-art facilities within the enviable setting of a New England university community.