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- Jul 15, 2014
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I am posting this thread to expose Rush University for what it truly is. There has been much talk over the years about how Rush is a 'malignant' program, without any elaboration or rationale. For the sake of full disclosure, I have been gone from Rush for several years, but still recent enough to remember the last gory details. I absolutely could not stand my residency. With that said, I am making an effort to be as objective as possible. Therefore, you will not hear me complain about 'mean attendings', 'long hours', or anything else that would be inherent to the majority of residency programs. Without further ado, an insider look as to why Rush is a malignant program:
1. The System. Unbeknownst to many, the Rush Anesthesia group is a private group. Ie, the majority of attendings that enroll haven't the slightest interest in teaching to begin with. The group is extremely profitable, given the daily volume of cases, and yet the attendings are paid disproportionately low salaries (private practice workload, academic salary). This results in a particularly embittered attending staff, bitterness which then gets transmitted to the residents in the form of berating, yelling, condescension, etc. This, of course, then transmitted to senior residence in the way they treated their junior residents. Many problems that could easily be solved by group funds continue to go unresolved, showing a perceived lack of care on the part of the owners. This leads to low morale all around.
2. The Scheduler. The OR scheduler is an out of practice CRNA who is terrible at their job. This person confuses people with similar sounding names, and often places CA-1s in CA-3 level cases. They approve vacation days and then schedule residents to do open hearts on those days. They assign people who are scheduled to be off-site to come to Rush without any prior notification. They would announce to us that we were placed on call 'last minute' the moment we walked in. All this person does is create chaos, and yet they refuse to have an assistant, and their wishes somehow are granted due to unknown political power. At one point, several attendings threatened to resign unless this person was also relieved. That person is still at Rush, in case you're wondering how that went...
3. The Techs. These people are not only short staffed, but completely useless. Our rooms were almost never stocked in the mornings, even though there was supposedly someone there 24 hours/day. When I come in to work in the morning, the last thing I want to worry about is having to stock a room with 10 cc syringes. To make matters worse, they come into our rooms between cases and throw out our clean supplies, leaving us to re-set up our rooms between turnover. Good luck to anybody who happens to have a lazy attending that does nothing to help with the turnover process (other than yelling at us for being 'too slow', of course...)
4. The 'PD'. I made a promise that I would not complain about attendings, and I stand by that. If this were an issue of any other terrible attending, it would be ok. But it's not any attending, it's our PD. Our PD was the department chair, who was a legitimately good person. Unfortunately, due to administrative constraints, the PD spent very little time actually directing us. Instead, we were primarily under the direction of a different attending, one whose name sends chills down my spine to this day. This person was the definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Arrogant, condescending, childish, and completely unapproachable. Aside from overseeing our education, the job of the PD is to be able to serve as a conduit between residents and attendings, to be an advocate and voice concerns. This person only called us to their office to yell at us about 'bad' test scores. They would hold case conferences and yell at/mock the person presenting, and then they would wonder why nobody would want to present cases in the morning. They would hold periodic meetings for the residents to voice concerns, and then shout us down when we would voice concerns as if we had the stupidest ideas out there. They would throw temper tantrums like a child whenever they didn't get their way. They thought they had the best ideas in the world, and then would wonder why morale was low. This is not the type of person who should be in charge of resident education.
5. The coordinator. The original coordinator was very good. However, some time after I left, I heard a new coordinator took over, one who is completely disorganized. They do not notify anybody about anything important (exams included), until literally a day before the test, after some people have approved vacations and other plans. In fact, I heard from a friend that they completely forgot to schedule an exam one year so that none of the residents could take it.
6. Interview dinners. There was a time when I used to enjoy meeting candidates and hyping up the program. Eventually, I could no longer look anybody in the eye and honestly tell them that they would be happy here. Everybody talked this program up, saying how we were 'well trained' and all this other BS, even though they never stopped complaining about the program after the candidates left. Even though they were advertised as 'relaxed' social gatherings with the opportunity to ask questions, we were secretly asked to pick a candidate or 2 and fill out an evaluation without them knowing. Shady.
I admit, several things may have changed since I left. There is a new PD now. There is a new hospital that has opened. Some new attendings have come in. I'm not sure how different things are, but from what I hear, most residents are still miserable. Many warned against this place, and I did not find out why until it was too late. Some people do legitimately like it there, but they did not seem to be a majority. I do think I learned a lot here and was trained well. However, there are plenty of well trained anesthesiologists who probably didn't have to deal with the BS at Rush. I would not have ranked them nearly as high if I knew back then what I know now.
This, of course, is the opinion of one person, as many people will continue to say. Take it for what it's worth. Good luck with the match process.
1. The System. Unbeknownst to many, the Rush Anesthesia group is a private group. Ie, the majority of attendings that enroll haven't the slightest interest in teaching to begin with. The group is extremely profitable, given the daily volume of cases, and yet the attendings are paid disproportionately low salaries (private practice workload, academic salary). This results in a particularly embittered attending staff, bitterness which then gets transmitted to the residents in the form of berating, yelling, condescension, etc. This, of course, then transmitted to senior residence in the way they treated their junior residents. Many problems that could easily be solved by group funds continue to go unresolved, showing a perceived lack of care on the part of the owners. This leads to low morale all around.
2. The Scheduler. The OR scheduler is an out of practice CRNA who is terrible at their job. This person confuses people with similar sounding names, and often places CA-1s in CA-3 level cases. They approve vacation days and then schedule residents to do open hearts on those days. They assign people who are scheduled to be off-site to come to Rush without any prior notification. They would announce to us that we were placed on call 'last minute' the moment we walked in. All this person does is create chaos, and yet they refuse to have an assistant, and their wishes somehow are granted due to unknown political power. At one point, several attendings threatened to resign unless this person was also relieved. That person is still at Rush, in case you're wondering how that went...
3. The Techs. These people are not only short staffed, but completely useless. Our rooms were almost never stocked in the mornings, even though there was supposedly someone there 24 hours/day. When I come in to work in the morning, the last thing I want to worry about is having to stock a room with 10 cc syringes. To make matters worse, they come into our rooms between cases and throw out our clean supplies, leaving us to re-set up our rooms between turnover. Good luck to anybody who happens to have a lazy attending that does nothing to help with the turnover process (other than yelling at us for being 'too slow', of course...)
4. The 'PD'. I made a promise that I would not complain about attendings, and I stand by that. If this were an issue of any other terrible attending, it would be ok. But it's not any attending, it's our PD. Our PD was the department chair, who was a legitimately good person. Unfortunately, due to administrative constraints, the PD spent very little time actually directing us. Instead, we were primarily under the direction of a different attending, one whose name sends chills down my spine to this day. This person was the definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Arrogant, condescending, childish, and completely unapproachable. Aside from overseeing our education, the job of the PD is to be able to serve as a conduit between residents and attendings, to be an advocate and voice concerns. This person only called us to their office to yell at us about 'bad' test scores. They would hold case conferences and yell at/mock the person presenting, and then they would wonder why nobody would want to present cases in the morning. They would hold periodic meetings for the residents to voice concerns, and then shout us down when we would voice concerns as if we had the stupidest ideas out there. They would throw temper tantrums like a child whenever they didn't get their way. They thought they had the best ideas in the world, and then would wonder why morale was low. This is not the type of person who should be in charge of resident education.
5. The coordinator. The original coordinator was very good. However, some time after I left, I heard a new coordinator took over, one who is completely disorganized. They do not notify anybody about anything important (exams included), until literally a day before the test, after some people have approved vacations and other plans. In fact, I heard from a friend that they completely forgot to schedule an exam one year so that none of the residents could take it.
6. Interview dinners. There was a time when I used to enjoy meeting candidates and hyping up the program. Eventually, I could no longer look anybody in the eye and honestly tell them that they would be happy here. Everybody talked this program up, saying how we were 'well trained' and all this other BS, even though they never stopped complaining about the program after the candidates left. Even though they were advertised as 'relaxed' social gatherings with the opportunity to ask questions, we were secretly asked to pick a candidate or 2 and fill out an evaluation without them knowing. Shady.
I admit, several things may have changed since I left. There is a new PD now. There is a new hospital that has opened. Some new attendings have come in. I'm not sure how different things are, but from what I hear, most residents are still miserable. Many warned against this place, and I did not find out why until it was too late. Some people do legitimately like it there, but they did not seem to be a majority. I do think I learned a lot here and was trained well. However, there are plenty of well trained anesthesiologists who probably didn't have to deal with the BS at Rush. I would not have ranked them nearly as high if I knew back then what I know now.
This, of course, is the opinion of one person, as many people will continue to say. Take it for what it's worth. Good luck with the match process.
