I rotated at WRNMMC this fall for general surgery. There are 6 or 7 general surgery teams: blue, red, white, gold, TACS, pink, green. Each has a set of attendings that stays with that team and thus flavors the surgeries for that team. TACS or trauma and acute care surgery was the busiest service while I was there. They received all of the consults from the ER and trauma transfers. They were the oncall service for the day, every day. One day, they had 5 cases go. Pink was mostly breast surgery. They had lots of clinic. Green was the overnight team. As a 4th year, you will do two overnight calls with them, seeing the consults and presenting the patients in the morning. Gold was colorectal surgery. White was surg onc, red was scheduled general surgery and some peds surg, and blue was gen surg with other subspecialties.
There was a chief, a couple of junior residents, and an intern for each team plus a 4th year or two and a 3rd year medical student. Mornings are like typical surgery mornings. Get to the hospital early enough to see your patients and write notes before chief rounds at 6 or 6:30. Morning report was at 7 where the overnight consults were presented to the department. A 4th year student would usually present one patient and the residents would present the rest. After morning report, you would finish your notes, carry out the plan of the day, operate, or go to clinic. You finish your day when the work is done. For most teams, this was between 1600 and 1800. For TACS, usually 1800-2000 because of the patient load, though this would vary from month to month. 4th years were asked to come in 1 out of two days on the weekend to see patients and round. Following rounds, most would leave unless you had a case go to the OR.
Wednesday was academic day. From 0800 to 1200, you would hear med student presentations first (every 4th year does a 10 minute presentation on a topic of your choice). Followed by a formal chief presentation on a topic and pre-op conference for scheduled cases. Occasionally there were some interdisciplinary conferences with GI called "belly board." 1100 to 1200 was "resident school" which was an ABSITE lecture given by a chief.
Overall, it was a pretty good rotation. I did not encounter malignant personalities, and most people were friendly and helpful. Some services were busier than others, but it probably varies from month to month. WR is a huge hospital and it takes about a week to become acclimated to where everything is. The galley at WR is fantastic. It is in the same building as the general surgery department, and it offers a huge selection with most meals costing $4 or less. On base housing is at the Navy Lodge or the Navy Gateway Inn and Suites. Pretty standard lodging with a microwave and mini-fridge. Both places were within a 5 minute walk of the hospital. Contrary to what the Navy or Army says about POVs, you can bring one, it'll just have to remain at hotel parking lot. Travel reimbursement though gets tricky, I think, if you are outside of a 350 mile radius of WR. The metro is located right outside of the main gate entrance, so getting into DC on your off days is relatively easy. You'll save a little bit of money if you get the metro pass. You'll have a few days off, and if you've never been to DC, go try and see the monuments and the Smithsonian. There's no cost to admission, and they're great American icons. Other things to see would be Old Town Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and some of the Civil War battle sites.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.
