I recently returned from a week long externship at Christiana Care Hospital in Wilmington, DE. Some facts about this program:
* This is a 4 year OMFS program and mainly covers two hospitals. Christiana Care in Newark, DE and Wilmington Hospital in Wilmington, DE. The hospitals are about 10 minutes drive from each other. Christiana is the only Level I trauma hospital in the state. They get a lot of patients sent to them from other state hospitals. I believe they also cover a childrens hospital during some part of the 4 year program.
* One resident is accepted each year and on average the hospital matches someone with experiance in the form of a GPR or an internship, however there have been residents in the past who have matched out of dental school.
* The clinic is located at Wilmington Hospital and is shared with 9-10 General Practice Residents. The GP Residents take call at Christiana to help weed out the minor dental trauma that comes through the ER.
* One intern is accepted each year. The program is not necessarily a feeder program in which the intern automatically matches the next year, but interns have matched in the past.
* There are no ENT residents or plastics residents. The OMFS residents cover many cases with the ENT faculty and the plastics faculty. The program offers a great variety of procedures.
* Call is taken from home because the hospitals are so close to each other.
* The externship is strictly hands off, observation only and strictly adhered to.
* Finally, the residents seemed happy with the program. They were busy (I was there during a slow week too), but overall they were happy. This may be attributable to the attendings and program director, office staff, and co-residents who were very nice and willing to teach.
I was there during the fourth of July week. The same week the new resident and intern were starting. Like I said above, it was a abnormally slow week, however we managed to work from about 6:30am to 9-10:00pm almost every day. Here is a summary of my 7 days and the procedures I witnessed:
* Lots of dento-alveolar experiance. Lots of sedations, 3rds extractions and implants.
* Lots of trauma. I saw: bicoronal flap approach to a crushed frontal sinus, zygomatic fractures, mandible fractures, and maxillary fractures. I saw a dog attack that did a nice number on a drunk guys ear. A poor elderly lady had fallen and hit her eye and needed a lateral orbital canthotomy to reduce retroorbital swelling. A blown out orbital floor that needed to have an implant placed. The residents scrubbed in with a really nice oculoplastic surgeon who let them do the whole thing.
* They said they did a lot of elective surgery, unfortunately we didnt have any scheduled for that week (the same week the new residents were coming) but when we did rounds I met a few patients who had had orthognathic surgery done the day prior. I also observed the chief resident remove a thyroglossal duct cyst in the OR.
* The week after I left they were getting ready for a couple of OR cases, one involving a large mandibular tumor, and another for a large malignant growth in the sinus that was eroding the body of the maxilla and looked to be 6cm by 6cm. This was proof to me that they do extensive oncological dissections.
Overall I was impressed with the facilities, the location, the attendings, the program director, and the scope of experiance the residents receive. They have weekly meetings with the attendings where they review didactics and they also have implant seminars each week, unless they are too busy to have the meetings. We had one such meeting the week I was there that was called short due to 3 beepers going off and everyone having to leave. I would definitely check this program out.
