🙂 D-town definitely has a lot of trauma. Good luck!
I really don't know what the numbers are at DMC or other programs other than UPMC (and ones I visited during my externships), though I wouldn't mind if CASPR/CRIP/CPME would release them for each residency program...
It's hard to say what "people" will think. I guess it depends on who you ask, if they have "heard" of this place or that place, etc. Having actual ##'s released seems to be an easy way to fix this problem, at least in the Podiatric world. In the Ortho world, they rank the different trauma centers nationwide/worldwide. Maybe Podiatry should start doing that, too with Residency programs??
It would be nice if they would release the numbers in the CASPR/CRIP residency guide and they used to but they stopped doing it a few years ago because apparently, programs were fudging their numbers and there really isn't any way to monitor it. I agree with Stafocker though. It would be nice if they would start releasing numbers in some form.
Concerning DMC, there are a lot of misconceptions concerning our numbers. Yes, we do get "a lot of trauma" and I would say that our trauma surgery is among the best in the country. BUT, what people fail to understand is that
ELECTIVE SURGERY still makes up the majority of our surgical cases. Though these percentages probably aren't totally accurate, I'd say that 80-85% of our surgery is elective while only 15-20% is trauma. So why are people always saying, "DMC gets tons of trauma"? This is because compared to most programs where trauma makes up less than 5% of total surgery, 15-20% IS A LOT.
The sad truth is that some residency programs (including a few in MI) will use this misconception to knock the program. A student told me that one residency director here in Michigan recently told him, "Yea, those DMC docs graduate experts in trauma but, unfortunately, they don't know how to do a bunion." This couldn't be further from the truth. While our trauma does rival any program in the country, so does our forefoot/rearfoot elective.
Just for fun, I took a look at our schedule from November 1st to now. Even though it is a slow month due to Thanksgiving, our residents have done a total of
68 bunions!!! And then there are the hammertoes, plantar fasciotomies, fusions, lesser met stuff, gangions, flatfoot recons, etc.
As for me, I have no problem telling people my numbers. I currently have 194 procedures, 117 of which are C. That was my first 3 months as I have been off podiatry since 10/1 (I finally return 12/1).
