Away Clerkship Program: UMD vs GW

[Roy7]

Hey everyone,

Just wondering which progrma is recommended for Rad's between the two in terms of clinical exposure and learning. I dont want to go into radiology, but want to be competent and was wondering which program is better.

Thanks!

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[shocker]

I can only speak about UMD. I interviewed there for residency and was EXTREMELY impressed. They have an excellent residency program, but I know you don't care about that.

As far as learning as a medical student, they pursue it with some vigor I'm told. The clerkship director(Chest section) comes in early to read out some films to free at least an hour to dedicated teaching at the viewbox (I mean monitor). The noon conference was solid and provided some decent humor as well.

Didn't visit GW.

Good luck.

 

[blaise77]

I would go with UMD over GW...GW is a small hospital with limited variability of cases seen. If your in it for pure learning experience then I think at UMD you will see and learn more.

 

[freddydpt]

I would go with UMD over GW...GW is a small hospital with limited variability of cases seen. If your in it for pure learning experience then I think at UMD you will see and learn more.

I go to GW and will be pursuing residency at UMD. I did a rotation at GW. The GW rotation is structured like this... you are assigned one section per week among CT, Bone, Chest, Neuro. You can do other sections, but you have to request them. We get didactics (approx qod) among those respective sections. There are 5-6 days where you have a hot seat session with Dr. Rapelyea, the course director for 1 hr. Those read out sessions are based on some of the didactics so you get to apply what you learned. During the bone week you are assigned a teaching file to go through by yourself or with a partner and then Dr. Brindle goes through them with you together. You also attend noon conf, and am conf is optional.

As far as the quote above from blaise77, I can't even begin to address the ignorance of his or her quote. Your goal as a medical student should be to come out of a radiology rotation being super efficient at CXR's, proficient at bone x-ray, AXR, have a general understanding to the approach to a body CT (understanding windows, organ approach, etc), and be able to pick up a bleed on a neuro scan. You'll have a final exam, partially computer based testing you on those skills. Zebra cases should not be attempted at our level... now with that said, you'll see tons of crazy stuff at GW.

With this all said, when I interviewed with Dr. Pugatch, he showed me many thank you cards from the students in his rotation. He is a hilarious guy and a very dedicated teacher (who I look forward to learning from). I don't know the structure of the rotation, but I'd gauge you'd learn a ton while you are there. UMD really has a phenomenal dept.

You can't go wrong either way.

 

[Roy7]

I wanted to thank everyone for the great responses. I'll probably check which blocks correspond to my schedule and go from there as both seem relatively comparable in terms of the quality of both.

Thanks again.

 

[blaise77]

Im sure GW is a great school and you will definitely see the basic cases in radiology at both programs. Also, it sounds like their rotation is heavily geared towards teaching. My comment was soley on the reputation of their programs, size and diversity of patient population, and knowledge about their neuroradiology section. Ive heard GW only has one neuroradiologist and no interventional neuroradiology as opposed to say Georgetown who is a hospital only slightly larger than GW with about 5 neurorads and 3 interventional neurorads. But then again if you are just doing the rotation for purely learning basics then Im sure GW is fine if not better than UMD. Sorry if you took offense to my opinion fred

 

[freddydpt]

Im sure GW is a great school and you will definitely see the basic cases in radiology at both programs. Also, it sounds like their rotation is heavily geared towards teaching. My comment was soley on the reputation of their programs, size and diversity of patient population, and knowledge about their neuroradiology section. Ive heard GW only has one neuroradiologist and no interventional neuroradiology as opposed to say Georgetown who is a hospital only slightly larger than GW with about 5 neurorads and 3 interventional neurorads. But then again if you are just doing the rotation for purely learning basics then Im sure GW is fine if not better than UMD. Sorry if you took offense to my opinion fred

The INR is Dr. Deshmuk (pardon the spelling if incorrect). He is a neurosurgeon and the IR fellows scrub in on cases all the time. There is certainly more than one neurorad at GW... one of whom is a reviewer for Radiology. I've only worked with Dr. Levy, but I've seen other neuro attendings in that station.

No offense taken... I just want to make sure facts are stated as facts. I agree the residency is a small program, small hospital, but diversity is definitely not an issue... senators to homeless... the only thing GW really misses is transplant.