Applying to Residency with Questions...

[lovey29]

Hello All,

As I begin my application for Family Medicine residencies I have a few questions and I'd appreciate your insight.

1. How important is it to attend a program with a heavy OB experience if you would like to incorporate OB into your future practice?


2. Which programs in Texas or in the Southeast have a heavy OB experience?


3. Who has the best training experience --opposed or unopposed programs?


Thanks in advance!

 

[ArkansasRanger]

Hello All,

As I begin my application for Family Medicine residencies I have a few questions and I'd appreciate your insight.

1. How important is it to attend a program with a heavy OB experience if you would like to incorporate OB into your future practice?


2. Which programs in Texas or in the Southeast have a heavy OB experience?


3. Who has the best training experience --opposed or unopposed programs?


Thanks in advance!

I'm not a clincian of any type, but I would suspect that you'd need quite a bit of OB exposure if you wanted to promote youself as an OB-competent family physician. I personally wouldn't feel good taking my pregnant wife to a doctor that did a month rotation in OB.

 

[aparecida]

Here's a thread from a few months ago about strong FM programs in the South and Southeast. The programs people mentioned there would be a great place to start.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=612696

Choosing a program with strong OB is helpful, but not essential. If you don't feel your skills are up to par for what you want at the end of your residency, there are one-year OB fellowships for that. A forum search will turn up threads on this.

Opposed vs unopposed is a huge debate that, also, can no doubt be read about by a forum search. With that said, I applied almost exclusively to unopposed programs.

I personally wouldn't feel good taking my pregnant wife to a doctor that did a month rotation in OB.

Er, that's not how it works for FM.

 

[lowbudget]

2. Which programs in Texas or in the Southeast have a heavy OB experience?

In Texas, for programs with good OB, check out Waco, Tyler, Memorial Southwest, and JPS. JPS has OB/Gyn residents. I forget if Corpus Christi has a lot of OB or not.

 

[lovey29]

Thanks aparecida and lowbudget for the great info!

 

[ArkansasRanger]

Er, that's not how it works for FM.

Er, yeah, I know. I was illustrating a worst case scnario kind of situation.

 

[cabinbuilder]

CCMC DO Family Practice program is heavy into OB- we do about 400 deliveries/month. Everyone here is young, fertile, obese, with nothing better to do it seems. You don't have to have a strong OB program if you want to do a rural fellowship that is strong in OB later. Residency really is what you make of it too. If you are interested in OB then you make yourself available and do everything, if you are not then you do the minimum required and move on. I would think if you know you are wantin OB in your FM residency then you do as many electives as you can on the OB/NICU service on top or your required rotations.

I know too that Spohn Memorial residents (MD) get quite a bit of OB training as well.