Aside from location, prestige and happy residents... what are some things that influenced your decision on how to rank programs? And can you comment on some of the points below?
- Program size: what are the pros and cons of a <4 categorical program versus > 4?
You already asked this
- What is a realistically acceptable call schedule?
- Is there a goal case load as an intern?
I would advise you not to base your program choice on what intern year is like, honestly.
There will be lots of different call schedules and amount of call out there.
But the reality is that taking 10 extra calls, or two weeks more of night float, or whatever the difference may be, is negligible in a five year program.
My only caveat to this advice is about cases - the ABS now has a requirement that to move to PGY3 you must have 250 cases logged.
*However, this is 250 cases TOTAL, not 250 major cases. So in reality all this means is that interns need to stop being such lazy loggers. Our interns are notoriously bad about logging things like lipomas and central lines since they didn't "count" towards the graduation requirements. Well now they do, so we are bugging our interns to log them.
I think based on the last couple years of case data, we would have one resident who would be in trouble if the requirements were applied retroactively. But that's just because he is a notoriously lazy logger and only logs until he has met the required number in each category. I had ~350 major cases at the end of PGY2...and no clue how many lines and other miscellaneous non-major cases on top of that.
- How many cases should a graduating chief have scrubbed on?
Use the search function. ABS requires 750 cases I think (maybe 850?) but there are a lot of people who think that would be a woefully inadequate number. General SDN consensus seems to be that you should probably have >1000. But there are also different requirements for each person. Meaning, some chiefs could do 700 cases and still be technically proficient. Others could do twice that and still struggle. The learning curve is different for everyone.
