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- Nov 24, 2006
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Hope this is helpful, and I would like to hear about UPenn and Univ. of Utah/Kentucky if folks have been there.
OHIO STATE
Beautiful facilities, which I did not expect. A large, very nice hospital. Columbus looks like a pretty cool place, which is what I've heard about it. No traffic, very affordable houses (yes, you could totally buy a freestanding house, not a condo/townhome for whatever your price range is). A cool trendy restaurant area called the Short North where we went to a wine/tapas bar the night before. I liked it!
The staff at Ohio State was so welcoming and so nice... probably the nicest of any program I've been to, and I've been to like 10 programs. I really liked the program directors and the coordinating staff, and the residents too. Best lunch for interviewees, the lunch was unbelievable, at this fancy place called the Faculty Club. I like programs that have money to spend, it is a good sign. Oh, and I liked the department chair too very much.
There was also a highly electronic ED, which is one thing I'm looking for. The children's hospital seemed like a nice place to work too, though it wasn't that close to the main hospital and I would rather see peds integrated into your regular shifts (though I noticed that others don't feel the same way). The faculty seemed to be responsive to resident feedback and were changing the curriculum as a result, trying to make everything a good learning experience for them, which I also definitely appreciate.
Overall really liked this program and would rank it highly aside from personal reasons I have to be elsewhere.
GAINESVILLE
Gainesville is just a big college town in central Florida, a weird place because it's got plenty of people but no large buildings due to some sort of zoning restrictions that keep it looking like a smaller town than it is. The residency program is really new, I knew it was relatively recent but didn't realize that the interns had only started this year. So they currently have 8 residents. The hospital is not a huge hospital and it is on the college campus. The staff seemed to have quite a jovial relationship, everyone was laughing it up half the time. They said it was a great place for singles, too, all the college kids and grad students everywhere and of course southern girls at college, well you know what I mean.
The ED was fairly nice, fairly electronically up to date, but the really great thing is that they are building a new ED across the street to be part of a 'critical care tower' which will be awesome. I think that their ED then will certainly rival if not best UMass' ED (which is gorgeous and amazing as noted by other reviewers). It is aimed to be completed sometime like mid-2008 so we'd get a chance to work there.
Liked the program adminstrators, they were very casual and easy to talk to. This program seemed pretty laid back but I feel the educational experience would be good. Was impressed by the simulation experience because they use sim pretty frequently and they have the whole Sim family, not just one Sim man, though currently the stuff is squeezed into the conference room they will be changing their conference room soon and I assume then it will be just a devoted sim lab. Oh yeah, and the conference room had this ridiculous interactive presentation screen that you could 'touch-click' on. Biggest flat-screen I have ever seen. Finally you got plenty of food money and could use it at all the food places in the hospital which included Wendy's, ChickFilA, a coffee cart, etc.
UCONN
Moving on finally to UConn... sadly, I wasn't that into this program, but I think it was a result of partially being tired and partially it just wasn't the program for me, so I want to try to present an objective picture for others who might be into this program.
The program is located at Hartford Hospital, only maybe 3 months of time in the residency are spent at the UConn Health Center which is lovely and in Farmington. HH is not nearly as nice, the neighborhood is OK, it's not bad like coming into Hopkins or something. The children's hospital is pretty cool though, I did like it over there.
The simulation center was fairly advanced, it did span multiple rooms with a very high-tech looking control room, though it wasn't new and shiny it did look like a good solid setup. Most programs just have one room with the sim man and maybe a control room of some sort. This one also had a debriefing room with lecture space and all that.
The cafeteria did not look good and the residents said they had gotten it so that their food money would just be added on to their paycheck, which is probably a better arrangement even though it was only like $150 per year. What else... the didactics seemed OK, they have great 5 star reviews on scutwork so I think the residents are quite happy with it, think they just hired a new ultrasound fellowship trained guy and so improved that aspect of the program quite a bit. They have a flight program and you can go with the helicopter but I don't think it's required. Notably, at Yale you don't do helicopter stuff, you have to get farmed out for it to Pennsylvania because the UConn service is too busy to take them.
I am sure the trauma experience is excellent at UConn. The other thing I did not like was as I mentioned in another post, they had trouble with the administration and doing away rotations because of Medicare dollars. That bugged me. I'd say the international experience is not that strong here but you could probably go anywhere in the USA, where of course there are plenty of places to go and things to do, if you don't care much about going abroad.
OHIO STATE
Beautiful facilities, which I did not expect. A large, very nice hospital. Columbus looks like a pretty cool place, which is what I've heard about it. No traffic, very affordable houses (yes, you could totally buy a freestanding house, not a condo/townhome for whatever your price range is). A cool trendy restaurant area called the Short North where we went to a wine/tapas bar the night before. I liked it!
The staff at Ohio State was so welcoming and so nice... probably the nicest of any program I've been to, and I've been to like 10 programs. I really liked the program directors and the coordinating staff, and the residents too. Best lunch for interviewees, the lunch was unbelievable, at this fancy place called the Faculty Club. I like programs that have money to spend, it is a good sign. Oh, and I liked the department chair too very much.
There was also a highly electronic ED, which is one thing I'm looking for. The children's hospital seemed like a nice place to work too, though it wasn't that close to the main hospital and I would rather see peds integrated into your regular shifts (though I noticed that others don't feel the same way). The faculty seemed to be responsive to resident feedback and were changing the curriculum as a result, trying to make everything a good learning experience for them, which I also definitely appreciate.
Overall really liked this program and would rank it highly aside from personal reasons I have to be elsewhere.
GAINESVILLE
Gainesville is just a big college town in central Florida, a weird place because it's got plenty of people but no large buildings due to some sort of zoning restrictions that keep it looking like a smaller town than it is. The residency program is really new, I knew it was relatively recent but didn't realize that the interns had only started this year. So they currently have 8 residents. The hospital is not a huge hospital and it is on the college campus. The staff seemed to have quite a jovial relationship, everyone was laughing it up half the time. They said it was a great place for singles, too, all the college kids and grad students everywhere and of course southern girls at college, well you know what I mean.
The ED was fairly nice, fairly electronically up to date, but the really great thing is that they are building a new ED across the street to be part of a 'critical care tower' which will be awesome. I think that their ED then will certainly rival if not best UMass' ED (which is gorgeous and amazing as noted by other reviewers). It is aimed to be completed sometime like mid-2008 so we'd get a chance to work there.
Liked the program adminstrators, they were very casual and easy to talk to. This program seemed pretty laid back but I feel the educational experience would be good. Was impressed by the simulation experience because they use sim pretty frequently and they have the whole Sim family, not just one Sim man, though currently the stuff is squeezed into the conference room they will be changing their conference room soon and I assume then it will be just a devoted sim lab. Oh yeah, and the conference room had this ridiculous interactive presentation screen that you could 'touch-click' on. Biggest flat-screen I have ever seen. Finally you got plenty of food money and could use it at all the food places in the hospital which included Wendy's, ChickFilA, a coffee cart, etc.
UCONN
Moving on finally to UConn... sadly, I wasn't that into this program, but I think it was a result of partially being tired and partially it just wasn't the program for me, so I want to try to present an objective picture for others who might be into this program.
The program is located at Hartford Hospital, only maybe 3 months of time in the residency are spent at the UConn Health Center which is lovely and in Farmington. HH is not nearly as nice, the neighborhood is OK, it's not bad like coming into Hopkins or something. The children's hospital is pretty cool though, I did like it over there.
The simulation center was fairly advanced, it did span multiple rooms with a very high-tech looking control room, though it wasn't new and shiny it did look like a good solid setup. Most programs just have one room with the sim man and maybe a control room of some sort. This one also had a debriefing room with lecture space and all that.
The cafeteria did not look good and the residents said they had gotten it so that their food money would just be added on to their paycheck, which is probably a better arrangement even though it was only like $150 per year. What else... the didactics seemed OK, they have great 5 star reviews on scutwork so I think the residents are quite happy with it, think they just hired a new ultrasound fellowship trained guy and so improved that aspect of the program quite a bit. They have a flight program and you can go with the helicopter but I don't think it's required. Notably, at Yale you don't do helicopter stuff, you have to get farmed out for it to Pennsylvania because the UConn service is too busy to take them.
I am sure the trauma experience is excellent at UConn. The other thing I did not like was as I mentioned in another post, they had trouble with the administration and doing away rotations because of Medicare dollars. That bugged me. I'd say the international experience is not that strong here but you could probably go anywhere in the USA, where of course there are plenty of places to go and things to do, if you don't care much about going abroad.
