Rush Psychiatry?

[BackToday]

Anyone have any impressions of Rush's psychiatry program, particularly in regards to other Chicago psych programs? Hours? Demographics of patient populations? Work environment? Job prospects after graduation? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

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[Merovinge]

My friend's experience was that the work hours are very tough due to the small class size, number of consults/inpatients, and frequent call schedule. Rush does have a pretty nice resident lounge and I get the impression they generally try to treat their residents well outside of the work hours. There will be much more talk about reimbursement and that permeates through how they practice, this is either a good thing or bad thing depending on what you are looking for and much different than the academic centers approach (particularly NW and UIC). Patients are somewhat diverse but clearly the most/near the most exposure to upper income patients in the city. If CAP is important to you, the chair of CAP is a very famous forensic CAP who I personally know goes to bat for his people and who I have an extremely favorable impression of. PM with any other questions

 

[BackToday]

My friend's experience was that the work hours are very tough due to the small class size, number of consults/inpatients, and frequent call schedule. Rush does have a pretty nice resident lounge and I get the impression they generally try to treat their residents well outside of the work hours. There will be much more talk about reimbursement and that permeates through how they practice, this is either a good thing or bad thing depending on what you are looking for and much different than the academic centers approach (particularly NW and UIC). Patients are somewhat diverse but clearly the most/near the most exposure to upper income patients in the city. If CAP is important to you, the chair of CAP is a very famous forensic CAP who I personally know goes to bat for his people and who I have an extremely favorable impression of. PM with any other questions

Thanks for your help. Can I ask what you mean by the differences in reimbursement talk between Rush and the others? Do you mean that they tend to focus more on pushing their graduates into more private practice than NW/UIC? And I thought NW got most of the upper income patients in the city? Is that the same case as Rush, or is there patient diversity at both? Thanks!

 

[Merovinge]

As in, your daily practice and how you see patients is based on reimbursement for the hospital. This is very much a reality based thing but many folks prefer training in a system where reimbursement does not matter. For example, consults are seen daily to be billed at Rush, even if there is nothing to be done; academic institutes may see someone PRN which may be 1-2x week for stable patients that remain in the hospital for other reasons. They do also have a higher rate of folks go into PP, although there are a lot of confounding factors in that.

NW and Rush actually have quite a bit of pt diversity and I find it funny when people knock them on this. Sure they have less severe psychopathology than UIC but certainly the overall range of patients is higher.

 

[WingedOx]

As in, your daily practice and how you see patients is based on reimbursement for the hospital. This is very much a reality based thing but many folks prefer training in a system where reimbursement does not matter. For example, consults are seen daily to be billed at Rush, even if there is nothing to be done; academic institutes may see someone PRN which may be 1-2x week for stable patients that remain in the hospital for other reasons. They do also have a higher rate of folks go into PP, although there are a lot of confounding factors in that.

NW and Rush actually have quite a bit of pt diversity and I find it funny when people knock them on this. Sure they have less severe psychopathology than UIC but certainly the overall range of patients is higher.

I know one of the junior residents from NW got offended when I said this in a previous thread, but NW is stereotyped for having a lot of upper income patients, and a lot of people basically coming in off the street, with gap in between those. That's not to say that your experience as a resident won't expose you to a wide range of patients, but there's certainly a bit of a bimodal distribution of SES in their patient population.

Northwestern also works at the JB VA, which is an "interesting" place, to put it mildly.

 

[BackToday]

How bad are the hours at Rush? 70-80 hours per week during intern year and beyond?

And so, Rush and NW have both rich and poor patients?

 

[BackToday]

Bump.

 

[slappy]

I know one of the junior residents from NW got offended when I said this in a previous thread, but NW is stereotyped for having a lot of upper income patients, and a lot of people basically coming in off the street, with gap in between those. That's not to say that your experience as a resident won't expose you to a wide range of patients, but there's certainly a bit of a bimodal distribution of SES in their patient population.

Northwestern also works at the JB VA, which is an "interesting" place, to put it mildly.

I feel like the first part is kind of true about a lot of places.

What makes Jesse Brown VA interesting?

How bad are the hours at Rush? 70-80 hours per week during intern year and beyond?

And so, Rush and NW have both rich and poor patients?

This is purely second-hand knowledge, but you'll see more patients who are poor at Rush than you would at NW.

 

[WingedOx]

I feel like the first part is kind of true about a lot of places.

What makes Jesse Brown VA interesting?

.

Chicago's large urban middle class tends to get seen where their insurances send them, which don't tend to be the academic places. UIC was known for getting all the state and city workers, but I'm not sure if that's still the case with all the chaos going on financially at the state and city governments. Loyola sits right in the middle of a largely middle class area even though Maywood is kind of a dump.

The Brown VA is very low SES even by VA standards. Lots of guys literally coming if off the streets. They do a really good job considering what they're working with, but that requires a flexibility out of providers that not a lot of people can handle. LOTS of tolerance walk-ins. Malingering on the inpatient unit is over the top even for a VA.

 

[Medstudent2018]

People probably assume Northwestern doesn't see many poor patients because their main hospital looks like a hotel. From my understanding, medicine and psych residents see lots of the poor and homeless at the VA, whereas the obgyn residents took over the program at Stroger and now cover both.

 

[BackToday]

What kind of reputation does Rush have in the city for Psych? Are its residents able to get good positions? And I'm still trying to get a general idea of what hours Rush Psych residents work in their intern year and beyond? Anyone have any more info on that? Thanks.

 

[BackToday]

What's the atmosphere like at Rush's psych program (laid back, friendly, do they look after their residents?), and what are the medicine months like during the intern year?

 

[BackToday]

bump.