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VCU OMFS baby! We do 100% of the cutting in the OR (orthognathic, infection, trauma, pathology), slam a bunch of implants, take out a bunch of 3rds! Highly recommend you guys extern here. Great scope especially if you want to be a private practice OMFS who practices full scope. We don't do head and neck cancer here so look somewhere else if you want to get exposure to that. One of the best OMFS implant programs; we take intraoral scans of our patients and combine it with a CBCT to design surgical guides. We then 3D print our own surgical guides and use that to do fully guided all-on-6 implant cases as well as simple single unit implant cases. We have dynamic navigation for implants which tells you in real time where your handpiece is relative to the mandible/maxilla. All of the residents have fun and we have a pretty good culture among the residents and attendings here.
 
VCU OMFS baby! We do 100% of the cutting in the OR (orthognathic, infection, trauma, pathology), slam a bunch of implants, take out a bunch of 3rds! Highly recommend you guys extern here. Great scope especially if you want to be a private practice OMFS who practices full scope. We don't do head and neck cancer here so look somewhere else if you want to get exposure to that. One of the best OMFS implant programs; we take intraoral scans of our patients and combine it with a CBCT to design surgical guides. We then 3D print our own surgical guides and use that to do fully guided all-on-6 implant cases as well as simple single unit implant cases. We have dynamic navigation for implants which tells you in real time where your handpiece is relative to the mandible/maxilla. All of the residents have fun and we have a pretty good culture among the residents and attendings here.

Damn...
 
Title says it all 🙂

I sat in for several lectures that Dr. Deeb gave last month at a conference and was very impressed with what they do at VCU. Seemed like a great program to get trained for those who are going into private practice.

I’m at Knoxville and I would say we are heavy on cancer and trauma. OMFS is highly respected throughout our hospital and the residents are treated well. Definitely far away from being malignant. I’m very happy here and couldn’t imagine myself being elsewhere.
 
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I've heard residents at Cornell and BU are very happy. The happiest residents.
 
VCU OMFS baby! We do 100% of the cutting in the OR (orthognathic, infection, trauma, pathology), slam a bunch of implants, take out a bunch of 3rds! Highly recommend you guys extern here. Great scope especially if you want to be a private practice OMFS who practices full scope. We don't do head and neck cancer here so look somewhere else if you want to get exposure to that. One of the best OMFS implant programs; we take intraoral scans of our patients and combine it with a CBCT to design surgical guides. We then 3D print our own surgical guides and use that to do fully guided all-on-6 implant cases as well as simple single unit implant cases. We have dynamic navigation for implants which tells you in real time where your handpiece is relative to the mandible/maxilla. All of the residents have fun and we have a pretty good culture among the residents and attendings here.
Does VCU require one to extern at the program to get an interview or can students get interviews there without externing?
 
You can get an interview without externing but you have to have some pretty stellar stats. Your chances greatly increase when you have externed here. Also when I said we do 100% of the cutting I mean the Chief and 3rd year resident do the surgery while the attending watches and guides you when needed. Most other programs the attending cuts half and the resident cuts half.
 
VCU OMFS baby! We do 100% of the cutting in the OR (orthognathic, infection, trauma, pathology), slam a bunch of implants, take out a bunch of 3rds! Highly recommend you guys extern here. Great scope especially if you want to be a private practice OMFS who practices full scope. We don't do head and neck cancer here so look somewhere else if you want to get exposure to that. One of the best OMFS implant programs; we take intraoral scans of our patients and combine it with a CBCT to design surgical guides. We then 3D print our own surgical guides and use that to do fully guided all-on-6 implant cases as well as simple single unit implant cases. We have dynamic navigation for implants which tells you in real time where your handpiece is relative to the mandible/maxilla. All of the residents have fun and we have a pretty good culture among the residents and attendings here.
Isn’t it better to learn to place implants without using all these expensive toys? It’s also more time consuming to go through all these steps. Many specialists in the past didn’t have these in their training and they still do great work. I know many specialists who place good implants without using implant guides and all these expensive toys. They must do good jobs because they keep getting the referrals from the GPs. It saves both the patient and the doctor time and money. The referral GPs don't care what you have in your office.

I see a similar trend in ortho. Most ortho programs now introduce a lot new expensive toys to their residents…and put less emphasis on diagnosis, tx planning, tx mechanics, wire bendings etc. And when they get out and open their practices, they have to have all these expensive toys in order to treat their patients properly. They can’t work at places (ie the corp office) that lack these expensive gadgets. They can’t handle high patient volume.
 
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what crazy shenanigans do you guys get into in order to get bailed out of jail in Shreveport Louisiana? Last time I was there, only thing to do was go to the boats and gamble. The program sounds great though.
 
Best program in the country: LSU Shreveport.
Give me a reason to think otherwise.
And no I’m not a resident there.
 
Best program in the country: LSU Shreveport.
Give me a reason to think otherwise.
And no I’m not a resident there.

Great program. I think you'll find that "best program" title is going to really depend on each applicants own priorities.
 
Hah. So it has been a while since I posted on this site and, to be honest, I forgot that it even existed for a while until I got to talking about it with my good buddy, Sublimaze, this evening. After thinking about whether or not to weigh in after reading his (truly hilarious) post, I decided to say a few things because it may help some of the younger people looking at programs. I am one of the chief residents at Shreveport currently.

I don't think I can match Subby's reply for entertainment, however, I can say that yes, in Shreveport we are pretty happy. But what is happy? Are you "happy" after 36 hours of call and three ER runs to close dog bite wounds on 2 year old kids? Dunno.....Maybe after you see the follow ups and things look good. And get some sleep. Here's the thing....if you only want to sink implants and do gum grafts and minor intraoral bone grafting, you will never be really happy at some programs (like ours). If you want to see unbelievable cancer resections and recons, participate in crazy craniofacial surgeries, do orthognathics and trauma with some actual skill by the time you graduate, be the service in the hospital the people call when they don't know how to fix something AND put in implants and do gum grafts, then you will be happy in Shreveport, but you may not be happy at some program that is a glorified periodontics residency.

Couple of things about the Shreve- We operate a lot, we work hard and every single one of our attendings is top notch. All of that makes me happy. We have the power of Ghali Ghali to drive our department and there are no issues with territoriality for surgical cases in our world. We do what we want. He's also super approachable and a good man. He is the chancellor of the medical center, the dean of the medical school, our chairman and still operates more than most of the department chairmen in this country. David Kim is our fellowship director for the MORS residency and we spend a lot of time working with him as a resident. I just finished my rotation with him. He is an amazing clinician and possibly an even more amazing person. He expects a lot out of you, but if you don't putt the ball past the hole, it will never go in, as they say. Celso Palmieri is our trauma specialist and is really an amazing guy to work with as well. He spends a lot of time with you operating and you cut all of the cases. It's great because he's there to bail you out if you have trouble but almost never steps in unless you really need help. Jennifer Woerner is our PD and the fellowship director for our Cleft/Cranio program. She's great and I've spent a ton of time working with her over the past 4 years. She's very knowledgeable, skilled and has a keen desire to make this place awesome. She's a very pro-resident PD, which is refreshing. Andrew Meram is our newest attending and a good friend, so I'm glad he's sticking around. He taught me a lot of what I know. And Brett Shirley is at the VA and also comes over and does a lot of our microvascular recons. At the VA we do a ton of implants and blephs/rhinos/brow lifts. Functional cosmetics on the vets is always cool. It's good for them and good for us, too. Plus we are putting in 7-800 implants a year, as a service, at the VA now. Great stuff.

So is the question of "which residents are the happiest" meant to be: 1) the program in which residents can be lazy and don't have much responsibility, 2) the program in which residents cut the cases and have some autonomy, 3) the program in which the residents are treated with respect and not yelled at for stupid crap, 4) the program in which the residents learn from the cutting edge of our specialty, or 5) the program in which you learn all of OMFS, and not just a small and focused portion of the specialty? This is like the malignancy question. If you're in the crosshairs, anywhere can be malignant. Behave, give proper respect to your attendings, and take care of patients and malignancy usually will mysteriously disappear or at least become manageable. I'll give you a quote from someone that I respect a lot, to answer the question of "happiness" in residency- you have got to figure out what you want to do. If you want to be a program director and chairman, you have to shoot for that. If you want to yank teeth and put in implants, you need to go to an appropriate program but may not be truly happy at any residency. And if money is what is driving you, just stick with being a GP.
 
Because it's in Shreveport, LA. Many applicants can't convince themselves or their significant others to live there for 6 years. Besides location, I agree.

Yes Shreveport is not the most exciting place to live. But the cost of living is good. And it’s not terribly far from Dallas. At the end of the day you’ll practically live in the hospital so what does it matter?
 
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