"MDANESTHESIA101 said:
↑
Recent graduate from UT Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) - just a forewarning to people applying. Program is crumbling. Multiple staff are leaving/trying to leave. No to minimal resident advocacy. People performing terrible on training exams (multiple people failing the basic exam each year). Don't go there unless you're out of options."
Opinion from an insider calling bull****:
This program is improving and on the upidy up. I have a lot of friends that are anes residents in texas and we talk. From such, i deduce that UTHSCSA is one of the best, if not the best, programs in Texas. (cue winning special olympics joke)
Let me break down the quoted comment:
-Program is crumbling: his is utter and complete bull****. This program is going strong, the CA-2 class is one of the strongest classes in years.
Multiple staff are leaving/trying to leave: yeah duh, academia doesn't pay enough. People sometimes switch jobs.
I will never call out anyone, but the staff that have left have only improved the program. (one of the good ones left because husband switched residencies). The good ones leaving are moving on to greener pastures and family reasons. Either way, i don't see how every day business or normal transitions = program crumbling. There isn't a mass exodus or anything...
-The new hires are amazing: Every new higher brings a different persepctive and something new we can learn. Great for breadth of different ideas. One columbia-trained (residency and CC fellowship trained) that I look up to and try to learn as much from as possible before the attending realizes what a crappy deal it is to work here and leaves.
-No to minimal resident advocacy: I really don't know what defines "resident advocacy". Objectively we work way below the 80hr/week rule (never really close to 80 hours ever average Intern: 50-60s, CA-1: 60-70s, CA2-45-50s, CA-3: 50s mostly). Up until her retirement a few months ago, our vice chair was in charge of ACGME for the whole medical center. Our resident work condition/pay is the envy of the other specialties in the hospital. I can for sure tell you our working conditions, attending/resident relations, call burden is leagues better than UTSW and UT Houston. After talking to graduates and current residents of the other programs and other specialties, our resident advocacy seems above and beyond. The supportive staff is amazing. There is a wall of baby pictures from all the residents in the program office when you interview here. That told me tons about what is important and what the program valued. The only other picture wall i've seen is attending kid pictures at UTSW (believe me, i looked because i'm a huge sucker for baby pictures).
Our program director has a philosophy that is resident-centric. He leads by example, gives us a glimpse of views from down range (ex-military), and a great guy that I would love to just shoot the **** with if given the opportunity. He believes in carrots rather than sticks. That to me defines resident advocacy. Your boss rather reward good behavior than to punish bad ones. he's not punitive and positively re-inforce good behavior. I can name plenty of stories that shows he sees from the point of view of the resident first, but that'd be too long of a paragraph.
-People performing terrible on training exams:
This is your education. If you didnt take ownership of that in undergrad or med school, i think it's time that you learned that residency. My view is that not passing exams are on the resident, not the program. speically given the work hours listed above.
Our residency is also made up of a lot of people with family and extra-work obligations. An ITE score isn't a fair way to judge a program. The final judge should be board pass rate at the end of residency, ours is high. I believe one of the higest in texas when I interviewed here. That coupled with a low attrition rate (believe me, the program tries to do everything possible NOT to attrit) is what anyone should really look at.
My class's ITE percentile average is around 50%. Here are the breakdown of some of the top percentiles in my class: 92%ile, 87%ile, 83%ile, 72%ile, 72%ile, 72%ile. (i might be a few percentiles off, quoting from memory here but you get the idea). So obviously there is great learning and teaching happening here, the distribution is just bimodal.
This place wasn't my top choice when I ranked it (dad was sick and wanted to match closer to home), but if i had my rank list again, it's going #1. I also laugh at viewing this program as a last resort program, believe me, you could do a lot worse in texas.
There is a selection bias on smear posts - only the ones with extreme hate will post them. you rarely see someone go on SDN and make an throwaway just to say good things about a program. If we really want to compare programs objectively,
we should name and compare things like we did this thread. Furthermore, I come from a defensive position in trying to disprove that this is a bad residency. In future posts about my program, i'm going to be talking from a view of this is the best program in texas, but with minor critiques.
