Any input about UAB and Birmingham would be appreciate it.

I am from Birmingham and very familiar with the city and UAB, although not extremely familiar with the IM program , except that I know it gets consistently high ratings. Not as prestigious name as Duke but probably as good of a program.

UAB medical complex is huge and is top 20 in NIH funding. The facilities are mostly nice and new buidings are constantly being built. Presently, a new, main hospital is being built to replace some older buidings and also a new Women's and Infants Hospital is in the works. This hospital will complete a bridge physically (i.e. buildings) and clinically between the main hospital and the Children's Hospital of Alabama ( where I used to work -- a very nice place 2 blocks away.

I got an MPH from UAB and had many IM faculty, generalists and specialists, as guest lecturers. Most seemed to be great teachers/researchers and astute clinicians.

Birmingham is a beautiful place with plenty of nice weather to enjoy the outdoors ---- very hilly (not downtown area) and scenic. The beach and the mountains are within 5 hours of town. There are nice museums, nice shopping areas, great golfing and great restaurants. Other nightlife is probably not as abundant as some comparable towns. The population of metro Birmingham is about 1.1 million. I'm biased overall as I do miss the place. A negative is no major league sports.

There are a good number of Californians in Birmingham, connected with UAB or otherwise. Also, surprising to some, Birmingham is very diverse culturally and racially, with the Chinese and Hispanic populations of the area being approximately 10,000 and 50,000 respectively.

Hope this helps.

I'm with you, carpe diem. I miss B'ham too. Even more so after your description! I think that it is an awesome place. I worked with the director of the cardiology fellowship and various other cardiology faculty. All were top notch. The pathology is extremely diverse and research opportunities are endless. You will probably see more diabetes and renal patients than you will anywhere. Unfortunately, Alabama leads the nation in per capita diabetes and UAB does more kidney transplants than any hospital in the country.
I can't comment on whether the program is considered malignant or not. (I have heard both that it is from some people and that it used to be, but is no longer from others) I consider B'ham to be an up and coming city. Atlanta has been the hot Southern city for some time now. I think that B'ham will be that hot city is 10 years or so. Not California, but a great place to live.

I don't know as much about the city of Birmingham as you guys, but I could comment on what I know about the IM program from my interview day.

My impression was that the program, far from being malignant, actually reverburated with camraderie and collegiality. I heard that it used to be malignant (but this is just hearsay). Maybe this rep comes by comparison to other more warm and fuzzy Southern IM programs (no names). With the appropriation of the RRC rules, the residents seem very happy and have lives outside the hospital. But as with many other programs, UAB is clearly front-loaded for 'terns.

UAB is one of the few truly high-powered IM programs in the South. We've seen the numbers: 7th nih funding, 14th IM usnews. Impressive fellowship placements, ie. Of the present 3rd yr class, nine (yes NINE) people placed successfully for GI. The class size was between 30-34. Only one will be staying at UAB for GI. Last year (of 34 grads), 6 matched in Cards, 6 in Pulm/CC and 5 went on to GI.

Anyway, it's among my top programs, so I may be biased.

Hi folks,

I'm currently an MS-2 here at UAB. However, I've met a large number of people in IM at UAB and been to a lot of medicine conferences, so I might be able to answer some questions for you.

The quality of teaching by the IM clinicians in labs and didactic courses in the first two years has been *top notch* (far better than the normal faire). ID especially blew me away in quality of teaching, and the other IM faculty teaching at noon conference were "top notch" as well (although not having been in the clinics, I clearly don't know what top notch is).

I wanted to echo comments by carpe diem regarding the building boom here. The North Pavilion (new hospital) has almost 1,000,000 square feet of space. I had the opportunity to take a tour, and I was blown away by the facilities they will have built there. Expect it to be done by the end of this year. The Women and Infant's facility will be finished in 2006; land acquisition and design is currently in progress. Expect to see construction far into the future.

As far as malignancy is concerned, based on commentary from 3rd and 4th years, nearly all of the residents were characterized as kind, understanding, and noncompetitive (paraphrased quote "how did they get all these nice people?")

My folks are from the Bay Area, so I can surely make comparisons between here and Cali - the weather isn't as stable as it is on the coast, and certainly there isn't as large a minority population over here than it is over there. Most of the Chinese people here that I've seen are associated with UAB, and a lot of them are postdocs, grad students, or professors here at the School of Medicine. Surprisingly, the Hispanic population here is growing very fast and will be growing for the future. Birmingham is other ways more cosmopolitan that I originally thought before I came down here - restaurants, nightlife, and arts were better than I expected.

Anyways, if you have any more questions, feel free to PM me or post for others to see - I'm actually very happy here.

Yours,