What I heard from their residents:
1. The working environment is described as "dirty and hazardous". Residents are "immersed" in formalin when they gross. The ventilation system is working less optimally, if at all working. OSHA fined them twice on the formalin issue.
2. Residents are abused to gross. There is a chronic shortage of PAs, Beth Israel in particularly. And residents are always asked to "put out the fire". As a result, residents lose their education, no preview time, no signout with attendings, and no conferences. In addition, residents are mentally abused. The attendings count the numbers of blocks each resident submits every day. If the resident does not submit a "sufficient" numbers of block, see 200-300, the chairman will come to the resident and say "Hey, you are not grossing enough and you should work more." When residents are seen in the resident's room, either taking a break, or looking at slides, some attendings will say "What are you doing here, you should be grossing."
3. Many attendings lack the interest to teach. Conferences are mostly held by residents. Even techs are asked to give lectures. There are several cytopatholgists on site and a cytotech is giving a lecture on cytology?
4. The program director asks/encourages/forces residents to lie. For example, when residents are on cytology rotation, they are asked to cover adequacy on multiple sites and signout time is severely compromised. ACGME requirement is 1,500 cytology specimens to be examined by each resident. The program director will force the residents to tell ACGME that they are meeting the numbers and a retaliation follows if they don't.
5. I specifically asked about the grossing situation of the fourth years. The PD originally wanted all 4th years to gross 3-4 months but due to the impending ACGME probation, he gave up.
6. As a result of the previous facts, the board pass rate is below average. Particularly CP is only about 50%.