Ill cut to the chase: Want to do fellowship, leaning ID or Heme/Onc and almost done interviewing but still majorly indecisive and here is why-->

1. Wisconsin: cold weather, patient population limited to white upper collar?, no county hospital

2. Mayo: lack of procedures?, patient population limited to other Mayo employees, IBM employees, and out of country elites, lack of autonomy

3. Indiana University: less national prestige, q5 call for 8-9 months (i know i am a baby, right?),

4. UTSW: too much autonomy, poor ancillary services, work hours over 80?,

5. Texas A&M, Scott and White: pt population limited, too cushy, lack of national prestige, small resident class

6. Emory: grady has computers older than me, still read xrays by hand, poor ancillary service at grady

7. UAB: read both x rays and CT/MRI on film, poor ancillary service, call q4 -6month+ on sub specialty months

Quickly, I appreciate being able to sleep at night so as to be able to have some semblance of concentration during AM report and changeover, crave great teaching/mentors, like the creature comforts like never having to call for social placement/run to xray for films, want a diverse pt population with 6-8 pts avg service, and a good name never hurt anyone.

Thanks and please try not to turn this into a community Help Me Rank thread (a pet peeve i have acquired since i see people hijacking others Help Me Rank before the Original Poster's question has even been answered!)

Opine freely!

It seems as if some of your criteria are contradictory. Cush places with lots of ancillary services and little social issues to deal with will likely also serve primarily wealthy patients. If you want to take care of the underserved you are going to work much harder and help them with their social issues. Likewise you mention that some places have too much autonomy and other have too little autonomy. Unfortunately I think you are going to have to make some fundamental decisions about what you are interested in. It kinda sounds like you are more interested in a cush program based on what you have posted so far.

I can see your point, however, I will give further info on what I am looking for...I wish to serve all patient types so as to get the most experience in my 3 years. This is why I think a county hospital is highly important. I do not want a cush program only one that has a social worker who does the social work aspect of discharges and a program that has basic technology that is important since this is where the future is going to be. I also want a great deal of autonomy (with backup from residents and attendings on each patient) but do not want to have 10-12 patients each day and/or where I spend half my time trying to find disposition for my discharged patients. I would much rather spend my time on 6-8 pts a day and any free time reading up on my patients or learning from my resident and attendings. Finally, I know that there are plenty of q4 and q5 programs out there, but I find, as I am sure most do, that the more sleep I get on a busy service, the better I perform for both my patients and my education. I hope that clears it up. Thanks again

well.... If you are interested in heme-onc, is being able to intubate, doing pleural taps and putting in central lines important to you? If you think that this is a skill set that you would CERTAINLY like to acquire during residency, I am afraid training at Mayo can not guarantee that.

As far as autonomy in general is concerned, most consultants at Mayo do only clinical medicine and dont have any research programs that they have to run. Hence they very much like to run the show on inpatient services. I am afraid we wont be able to fix this in anyway in the next 3 years.

But I have to say for heme-onc we do see a lot of cool cases. The myeloma and amyloid group practice at Rochester is most likely the most reputed in US. If thats your pick in heme-onc , I wd encourage you to choose Mayo.

Ok people help me with my rank list as there is already this thread and I don't want to start a new one...so here are the programs i am applying to... j/k j/k :D

I think as far as ID goes, you can't beat UTSW or Grady...Given your preferences and bias my rank list would be:

Emory=UTSW > UAB

Grady and Parkland are similar in many aspects, as would be other county hospitals. I think what sets them apart from other bigger county hospitals like USC is that they are big research powerhouses as well and teaching is superb. However, and this is a BIG however, you WILL work your butts off in either of the two. Both are slowly upgrading their systems and services but being county hospitals will take little longer.

UAB has a lot of respect in south esp cards fellowship, but I personally don't know much about the proram.

Mayo, as docrocmayo said, has too little to no procedures (which is also important to me) but the do have good teaching, which is also important to be a better doc....and not to forget that they have q6 call system

I don't have any opinions on the others as I don't know too much about them

Good Luck :luck::luck::luck:

I, like the others, am having a real tough time with my top 5 programs.

Re: procedures, as a Heme/Onc or ID doc you will not need procedural skills. Procedures are satisfying at first, but they are a time sink on a busy call night on the floor. Unless you are interested in Pulm/CC, the procedures you do as a resident (e.g. thoras, paras, lines etc) won't prepare you for fellow-level procedures...

Mayo has a good name with great brand recognition in the midwest. Good mentorship potential with formal didactics/board review. Less autonomy, but great ancillary services, & great number/variety of cases. Q6 call system sounds nice. Q4 call can be exhausting.

from your list, i would rank
utsw
wisconsin
emory
uab
mayo
a&m

but you need to decide what your priorities are and figure out your own preferences, where you want to go

Ill cut to the chase: Want to do fellowship, leaning ID or Heme/Onc and almost done interviewing but still majorly indecisive and here is why-->

1. Wisconsin: cold weather, patient population limited to white upper collar?, no county hospital

2. Mayo: lack of procedures?, patient population limited to other Mayo employees, IBM employees, and out of country elites, lack of autonomy

3. Indiana University: less national prestige, q5 call for 8-9 months (i know i am a baby, right?),

4. UTSW: too much autonomy, poor ancillary services, work hours over 80?,

5. Texas A&M, Scott and White: pt population limited, too cushy, lack of national prestige, small resident class

6. Emory: grady has computers older than me, still read xrays by hand, poor ancillary service at grady

7. UAB: read both x rays and CT/MRI on film, poor ancillary service, call q4 -6month+ on sub specialty months

Quickly, I appreciate being able to sleep at night so as to be able to have some semblance of concentration during AM report and changeover, crave great teaching/mentors, like the creature comforts like never having to call for social placement/run to xray for films, want a diverse pt population with 6-8 pts avg service, and a good name never hurt anyone.

Thanks and please try not to turn this into a community Help Me Rank thread (a pet peeve i have acquired since i see people hijacking others Help Me Rank before the Original Poster's question has even been answered!)

Opine freely!

I think for prestige, I would rank
Mayo, UTSW, UAB, Emory as the top 4 of those, in no particular order. I really don't know which ones of those have the best ID and/or hem/onc fellowship matches. ID is easy to match in, and you would definitely get a spot in ID coming from those places...very likely AT those places if you desired that.
I have a friend who trained at UAB and she felt like the program was open to resident feedback...they apparently had weekly or monthly feedback sessions. Also I think they had night float...but you'd have to ask. I know they also work @a county hospital, b/c she talked about taking care of jail inmates.
Emory has Grady, where I'm sure you'd see some great pathology.
My impression is that those 4 institutions would be similarly well known by program directors, although Mayo may be a little too cushy and they don't do many procedures from what I've heard. You'll probably carry less patients @Mayo than UAB or Emory...UTSW from what I've heard works the residents very hard so I wouldn't expect to have only 6-8 patients if you go there.

DocRocMayo: very good point that I had not thought about since as of now I am set on being a very good internist (as good as can be in 3 years I guess) and never truly thought about how necessary it would be to run codes, tap, intubate, etc.... thanks for that excellent point.... i thought Mayo was amazing otherwise!

CanIMakeIt: funny, i actually did a double take at first and then saw your avatar and realized the joke...then i literally did lol. nice work. I respect your opinion on UAB, Emory, UTSW as well and think that all 3 were the most similar of all my interviews. I like all 3 for their autonomy, rigorous patient load, and clinical teaching that seems to be superb. I am nervous that I would be a zombie for 3 years and also feel overwhelmed in both high pt load and also lack of support (unless asking for it) come day 1 (some more than others).

oriented to self: thanks for list

dragonfly: i concur with each point you make. i am trying to find a happy medium of all but seems like i am just being picky with some of the places and trying to find the "perfect" place, which is not productive and not possible...

would love to hear more on both the unmentioned programs so far and more on the emory, uab, mayo, utsw, etc as well....thanks so far all

I thought I'd bring up a point that hasn't been discussed as of yet in this thread. Let me preface by saying that I think any of these places would be great, especially the four previously mentioned.

That being said, what is your gut feeling telling you about these places? Do you feel especially comfortable with any particular set of house staff or faculty? Do your ideas about what residency should be fit in particularly well with any program's dogma or the mindset of any housestaff? Is there any particular area of the country you'd rather be in? (Rochester vs Dallas is a big difference; as well as the vibe at Mayo vs UTSW)

For me, all the call schedules and too cush vs. to hardcore vs malignant vs 'fill in the blank' is all coming out in a wash. I think it is good to make some general decisions here, but then pick the place that best fits you and your ideals. That's what's going to make you happy and get along with your colleagues. The people we work and train with will have a greater impact on our end product after residency than any variation of call schedule or any of the small details we tend to add onto our spreadsheet.

For me, there is no perfect program. There is always some small thing that bothers me a bit. But I really think that once I'm there, these small things will not be an issue. So, go where you will be happy and the rest will work itself out.

Dr. Jitsu,

To answer some of your thoughts....I do have better feelings (gut feelings)for some on the list but I wanted an unbiased group of answers from the peanut gallery so to speak so that maybe I would end up teasing out some point of views that I had not thought of. I think it worked pretty well and left me with both answers and more questions!

Also, of all the locations, I do not have a preference for location only that I get a good equal mix of education vs. service. I also want an even mix of autonomy (i.e. confident that I have a backup at anytime needed). thanks