I interviewed at Boston U and was impressed by the place. there is no chief PD..there is an interim guy from Yale who is there for ? how long...

A couple weeks later I went to another iv and met a fellow interviewee . He spent most of the time gawping a my decision to rank BU high on my list because he said the rep is bad at BU. It is highly malignant prog and I should check out the reviews on the forum....he told me i would really regret going there....and no one is happy in the prog...apparently alot of the residents are unsupported and have difficulty with fellowship placement.

I am confused now....coming from Germany, I have no real knowledge of the bad rep etc...all I thought was it is a strong University prog.

Please give me ur views....anyone know the real truth about BU prog? It is hard to pick up a great deal during a half day IV.

meld dich bei mir per PM...hab an der BU meine residency gemacht...t.

I'm a BU 4th year, so I can try and answer some of this. There is a search for a new PD, and the interim PD is the chair of medicine. He's a nice guy and everybody is saying good things. He came here about a year ago and he's very open to suggestions and is willing to make changes based on resident feedback. As for the malignancy, I hear that a lot around here, but I haven't seen it really. The residents are a fun bunch and they're really nice. I've had a lot of good experiences with faculty. Education is highly emphasised, and if you're interested in Cards the director of cardiology education is such a great guy. On that note, I've never heard any problems in regards to resdents being supported for fellowship. I know that the residents doing cardiology do very well during their application. I think a lot of the "malignancy" in the program comes from how much work the residents have to do. There's really only two hospitals that the residents rotate through, BMC which is the county hospital, and the VA. Because there's no cushy private hospital to slow things down a bit, sometimes the residents grouse about the quantity of work, but the work gets done, and there haven't been any problems with the 80 hour limit. Overall, I think it's a great program, and I'm torn with whether I'd want to leave it or not. I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have.

thanks for ur responses...

i was concerned when i met some of the residents who complained that because of how loaded the program is, even though there is the famous evans research institution, it is hard to get things done like research because u r so busy with clinical duties.....i was surprised at just how many of the res were choosing primary care as apposed to fellowship and wondered whether this was related more to the fact that fellowship apps were not given due importance as I have seen at other places....like mayo MN for example...or is it apples and oranges to compare BU and Mayo? one resident actually listed not having been able to get research done during her time there as one of her major regrets about her residency.....

There are many good and excellent IM programs out there that will get you the fellowship you want, I would only have considered going to BU if I had family in area or for personal reasons as Mayo is obviously a higher tier than BU which is more middle of the road. The whole thing with the PD leaving is a bit odd as he was relatively young for a PD . . .(there are rumors that the faculty eat their own) and there is definitely not a family feeling at BU because of its size and just the history of the institution favors a "sink or swim" approach and there aren't any life preservers or life guards!, i.e. you will learn what you teach yourself for the most part, and intern year is very front loaded, a lot of residents are obsessed with getting a fellowship, others could care less. I think with things in flux i.e. new PD and hopefully a new direction to this program, folks will have to wait and see what the fellowship placement is like . . . a lot of excellent attendings have left in recent past years as there is cut-throat competitive streaks that runs in the residents AND attendings (!) from what I have seen. I would not recommend BU for anyone interested in research during residency though, partly because of lack of time, and also because BU doesn't support research as much as many other places, i.e. there are a lot of PhDs doing research, but it is not as much clinically integrated/relevant research that other places mesh into their residency programs. I have heard both good and bad, so I think the overall rep of this place is really in flux. Points have been made on how to make the residency more efficient to attendings, but a lot of them feel that residents should go through a trial by fire, so it is more of a "so ghetto" hospital (not my terminology but what how I heard residents describe it!)

"The whole thing with the PD leaving is a bit odd as he was relatively young for a PD . . .(there are rumors that the faculty eat their own) "

too many rumors on this board by people who really don't know the inside and basically confabulate...
always amazes me...

Dave Battinelli, the former PD may have looked young, but sure wasn't that young unless you consider mid50s young.
He als was one, if not the longest acting PD in IM...he was PD for 19 years....he became PD right after he finished his General medicine fellowship.
Fo personal reasons and most certainly given the lucrative offer, he moved to NY, where he originally is from and became vice president of NorthShore/ Long Island Jewsish Health System, To construct from that move some form of malignant atmosphere ( illustarted by some "rumor" of faculty eating each other) and derive a notion of the quality of the program is complicated isn't it....
if at all, one of the issues with BU is indeed, that it is homegrown...far too many of the leadership are BU trained and there is this cosy familiarity that the program leadership had, which at times may have prevented innovations. The new chair man deliberately did not nominate any of the associate PDs, to break this habbit. Indeed, the main reason he , the new chair main Dave coleman, was was actively courted by Dave battinelli ( who not only was the PD, but given his time at BU also Vice president for education and pretty influencial, interesting isn't it...) was for his track record as an education innovator at Yale. This is in stark contrast to the former chair man, Loscalso, one of the formost cardiologist in the US, and now chairman at Brigham, who was an excellent scientist and physiscian, but not nessesarly the best choice for the residency program, unless of course you want to go into cards and he wrote you a letter

where this whole notion of malignancy, and in particular in relation to attendings, comes from, specially on this board, I do not know... it has something of a constant perpetuation of factually wrong statements, and it seems that people feel they have to comment on a post, even if they do not have true inside and only 2nd or even 3rd hand information ( most probably from some other post on this board)
having been now at 3 different universities in the US, when it comes to faculty, BU is by far the most cosiest place to be..as a matter of fact, that is why a significant number of young, particular clinical faculty migrates every year from the Brigham to BU...because it is so much cosier and less cookie pressure.
Attendings have left, some mid-profile to high profile cardiologists...reason again is much less complicated and mean spirited...it is for great opportunities, like PD at Vanderbilt for Cardiology and for the fact that Loscalso left, which had held some of the higher profile ambitious cardiologists at BU...its still a strong cards department, and the fellowship is BU, MGH and Brigham recruted fellows in its entirety..has it hurt the cards fellow placement...not in the past 2 years, but certainly the effects of both man having left, would only be seen in a few years, if there was such an effect. However, institutions tend to be stronger then individuals.
The GI fellowship still is amazingly strong.
The original poster had mentioned some fellows going for primary care...there is a strong primary care tracks, those guys chose to go for primary care a priori, and there are 6-7 of them I believe.. everyone else that I knew and know of, goes for fellowship, as in any other university program.
People work hard and do usually well for fellowship.
are there residencies, where you don't work as hard and have access to the same level of fellowship placement. For certain... but somehow this argument evades me... as working hard at least to a significant degree in medicine equates to learning.....so you can go to a cush residency and end up at the same fellowship, but did you learn aand train the same way...I dispute that....residency should not be a prolongation of medical schoool, with hours of didactics, instead to touch on one of my favorite osler quotes...at some point you have to lay to books aside and go to sea...but that everyone has to decide for themselve