UNC-CH, Opinions?

I have heard that it is one of the top programs. Everyone that I have talked to has only said good things about the program. However, I would also like to hear other people's opinions, in that I do not have any direct experience with the school. Seems to be well respected nationally.

champ1999 said:

I have heard that it is one of the top programs. Everyone that I have talked to has only said good things about the program. However, I would also like to hear other people's opinions, in that I do not have any direct experience with the school. Seems to be well respected nationally.

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I'm a PGY-2 at UNC-CH.
The residents are very happy with our program. We have great support from our program's leadership. Judy Tintinalli (you've probably heard of her) is our Chair and ensures that we don't take any crap from any of the other services. Our PD is Doug Trocinski, who is very committed to resident well-being. Our assistant PDs, Josh Broder, Jim Larson, and Graham Snyder, are very friendly, interesting, helpful guys.
We have a very balanced program, we spend half our time at UNC-CH (academic, very high acuity w/ 45% admit rate and 15% ICU rate) and half our time at WakeMed in Raleigh (140,000 visit county hospital w/ private FFS EM group). At UNC, we get very comfortable with very complex patients (sometimes it seems as though half your patients have a transplant or rare disease) and at WakeMed we deal with more bread-and-butter cases and learn to get very efficient. Facilities and ancillary services at UNC are above average. At UNC we have more exposure to research, as much of the faculty do lots of basic science and clinical research. Also, much of our faculty and residents are very active in different leadership and admiinistrative roles. We try to attract residents who are looking to develop a niche witihn EM in addition to just working shifts.
WakeMed is moderate acuity and we have one resident in one of the four adult bays from 6A - 2A and one resident in the Children's ED 24 hrs a day, each working one-on-one with an attending. We get a tremendous experience running codes and traumas since they all go to the bay with the resident working in them. Also, the attendings working solo in the other bays will call you over for intubations, central lines, etc., so you get tons of procedures since you don't have to split them with the other patients. The Childrens ED sees about 45k, which may be the busiest in the Southeast, and has ~ 8 double boarded docs. Also, WakeMed has by far the nicest facilities and best ancillary services of any county hospital I've heard of.
The Chapel Hill-Durham-Raleigh Triangle is a great area to live. The weather is very nice and we have four seasons. Cost of living is very reasonable and ~80% of us own our homes. We work slightly less hours than your average program, but work hard when we're in the ED. There's lots of outdoors activities nearby as well as lots of great restaurants, nightlife, etc.
We recently expanded from 8 to 9 residents a year and might go to 10 next year. We're about 2/3 men, 1/3 women. We're a laid-back group and get together often with each other and the faculty. The majority of our graduates go into community EM (there are some great jobs around), some do fellowships or straight to academics. Since our program gives very good exposure to both environments, our grads feel very comfortable choosing which path to take.
If you are interviewing at UNC-CH this year, feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Take care,
Mark Reiter
PGY2, UNC-CH EM

I interviewed there 2 years ago and thought it was OK. Long drive between hospitals. As a lifelong Heels fan I'm sure traffic in the Smith Center, Hospital, business school area would suck at times as generally does traffic in the Raleigh area. Trauma exposure was less than I was looking for (looking more toward "county" programs). The residents seemed really nice and really sharp (this is what I found to be the biggest difference between and the biggest draw for/against programs -- the type of residents that were training there (along with geographical location)). The attendings I met there were friendly and they seemed to be fairly into research. The program ended up in my top 6 and the top of all the North Carolina programs (interviewed at all but ECU).
Good luck.

thierryh said:

I interviewed there 2 years ago and thought it was OK. Long drive between hospitals. As a lifelong Heels fan I'm sure traffic in the Smith Center, Hospital, business school area would suck at times as generally does traffic in the Raleigh area. Trauma exposure was less than I was looking for (looking more toward "county" programs). The residents seemed really nice and really sharp (this is what I found to be the biggest difference between and the biggest draw for/against programs -- the type of residents that were training there (along with geographical location)). The attendings I met there were friendly and they seemed to be fairly into research. The program ended up in my top 6 and the top of all the North Carolina programs (interviewed at all but ECU).
Good luck.

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so were did you end up?

chose not to apply - need to leave NC! part of the reason though was that i know how horrible the commute is. UNC and Wake Med are 35-45 min apart with NO traffic, which would only happen in off times. plus there's almost constant construction along the route... no matter where you lived you'd either have a 20+ min commute daily or a long one 1/2 of the time.

if the program is 100% for you then i guess one might not care, but w/ no public transportation available, quite frankly, it's a terrible physical setup. it is necessary though b/c a residency at UNC's ED only would not be worth a whole lot except for tertiary care and the univ. area stuff.

I had some concern about the commute before I started, but now don't consider it much of an issue now. Our shifts, especially those at WakeMed in Raleigh, are scheduled at times where there is no traffic. Maybe once every week or two, I am delayed by an extra five minutes going to Raleigh. We don't have to deal with UNC campus traffic either, as the hospital is the first major building off the main road. Most of us live in between the two hospitals in southern Durham, where you can get the best price on a nice, modern home. It typically takes 15-20 mins to get to UNC and 35 mins to get to WakeMed from my house. After two years, this month they finally finished construction to add another lane to I-40, the highway that connects Chapel Hill and Raleigh, so the trip should get a bit shorter. Sure, I'd rather not have to commute, but it's a similar commute at many other programs if you chose to live a bit farther out where you could get a good housing deal.

I'm happy with the trauma experience at UNC. As an intern, I ran about 100 traumas. The majority are blunt (MVCs, falls), but we get plenty of fresh, penetrating trauma at WakeMed from the knife-and-gun club which is about a mile from the hospital. UNC gets trauma from all over the state through Carolina Air Care, some fresh, some prepackaged. WakeMed gets all the trauma from Raleigh and its suburbs (it's the only trauma center in Raleigh), and much of the eastern part of the state until you get close to ECU.

Take care,
Mark Reiter
PGY-2, UNC EM

I interviewed there and toured both CH and Wake Med, ranked it #2 (with Wake as #1, of course). Program was fine although I didn't think they had as much peds as I liked - yes you have 3 dedicated peds months but that's still just 3 months. Here at Wake it totals up to 6 months. Anyway, that was one of the negatives for me (and it was that way at most programs) and the commute (which I drove). Otherwise both facilities were very nice and I think that it's just as Mark advertises.

Oh, and IIRC (which maybe I don't) they work 12's and 10's, and personally I find 12's to be psycho. Sure you will have to work them as an attending, but only ~14 a month.

emeddoc2001 said:

I had a couple more questions about UNC?

I noticed they get two weeks of vacation whereas many other programs seem to get 3 or 4. Is this made up for in other ways? This is not crucial to my decision, but i was curious. Also, when exactly does the residency start. Frieda says "June." Just curious. Thanks for your help.

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Let me answer your vacation question as well as clear up any other misconceptions.
Vacation:
We get three (not two) weeks of regular vacation time in each of the three years. In addition, we are partly on vacation for a 4th week every year during holidays. All EM residents are pulled from off-service rotations and work in the ED for 5 or 6 shifts, and then get 6 days off in a row (half get Christmas week, half get New Years week).

Peds:
The info about 3 scheduled Peds ED months above is not accurate. Our Peds shifts are integrated in all of our ED months over the course of the year. Typically, we will do about 5 Peds shifts a month in each ED month (but less during our first year). We do seven ED months 1st and 2nd year and all ED months 3rd year (including electives). All Peds ED shifts are at the WakeMed Children's ED, which sees about 50,000 kids/yr (one of the busiest in the country and I believe the busiest in the southeast). Many of our Peds ED attendings are double boarded.

Shift length:
The info above about only 10 and 12 hour shifts is not accurate. Half of our shifts are at Wake, where we work 10 hour shifts on the adult side and 8 hour shifts in the Peds ED. At UNC, we mainly work 12s as an intern, 10s as a PGY2, and mostly 8s but some 12s as a PGY3. Typically, each year the PGY3s-to-be will decide what length shifts they would like to work (there is a PGY3 in the UNC ED 24/7, except for conference).

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our program.

Take care,
Mark Reiter MD MBA
UNC Emergency Medicine PGY2
[email protected]

I stand corrected.