I understand that a lot of general surgery residencies have either officially or unofficially gone to 7 years of training rather than 5 years. Is there any easy way to identify those programs without scouring every website and/or calling every general surgery program in the country? I've found that some of them will come right out and say on their websites that two years of research are required, but others I've had to hear about via word of mouth. It's still early (I'm an M3), but I'm starting to think about what programs I'll want to apply to this fall.
Most of the historically academic programs have a 7 year model, with two years of research/professional development after the second or third years. (ie MGH, BWH, John’s Hopkins, Penn, Michigan, UCSF, Duke, Washington, Vanderbilt, UVA, WashU, etc). Most of these are not “required” but expected and almost everyone does them.
Strictly community programs almost always have 5 year programs.
The programs in between often have optional research years, with only a few people in the program doing them, or half the class, or will have the occasional person go out for research but mainly just do 5.
As far as how to find which is which, you can try asking residents or faculty at your home program. Or look on the individual programs websites. But can safely assume that most of the big name programs have 7 years, while more community programs have 5 and everyone else is somewhere in between. Programs are usually pretty up front about it, and if they aren’t that should be a red flag.
