Columbia: elitist or not?

[m3unsure]

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I was wondering what people thought of Columbia. Did you find it elitist? I did not see a lot of genuine contact between faculty and residents. Also, a student at my school did a 4 week rotation there, and she describes them as relatively miserable. Nothing "laid back" about the place. Anybody who is a student at the school or resident can vouch for this? Interviews are usually misleading at least in my opinion. Any comparisions to NYU?

 

[powermd]

I was wondering what people thought of Columbia. Did you find it elitist? I did not see a lot of genuine contact between faculty and residents. Also, a student at my school did a 4 week rotation there, and she describes them as relatively miserable. Nothing "laid back" about the place. Anybody who is a student at the school or resident can vouch for this? Interviews are usually misleading at least in my opinion. Any comparisions to NYU?

No one I know is miserable at Columbia. It's definitely not "laid-back". We see a particularly high level of acuity in our patients at Columbia, and we all take that that pretty seriously. Having said that, once you know what you're doing, there will be plenty of 'laid-back' cases where you just chill, read, and barely see your attending. The atmosphere has a sense of pleasant camraderie. There is definitely a palpable feeling of distance between the faculty who have been in the program for many years and the residents, with a few exceptions. The program has a building number of new, young attendings, who are excellent teachers, and are more colleagial (first-name basis). I'm not sure how much contact you feel is appropriate between faculty and residents, but we do not tend to socialize with attendings here, except at departmental functions. One of our residents recently started a 'journal club' that will meet bimonthly at an attending's home in NYC with catered dinner to discuss issues that will affect our future practice in a more relaxed setting. If you have other questions about Columbia, I'd be happy to answer. I did outside rotations at NYU in my M4 year, my impression is that there's really no comparison to Columbia. We see the sickest of the sick here, and lots of them. The only thing we miss out on is trauma, but NYU doesn't see much serious trauma either. To have a meaningful trauma experience you can do an off-site rotation for a month in your CA-3 year. Didactic teaching at Columbia is not perfect, but well-organized and consistent. We get one class-specific lecture per week, as well as Grand Rounds for everyone Thursday morning. Fridays at noon we have 'chief rounds', where one resident presents on a given topic for about 45 minutes. People take it seriously because you get credit for the presentation as an 'academic project', which is requried for graduation.

 

[randomq]

a classmate of mine did an away rotation at columbia as well, and said similar things as your friend. the above post from the resident is obviously a lot more comprehensive, but I did get the vibe that the PD isnt the biggest resident advocate. my friend also felt that about half of the attendings were happy to be there and happy to teach, whereas the other half had other motivation/reasons to be there. She had also mentioned that a few of the residents there had said to her that they feel like the attendings workforce. but i really feel that for most residencies, especially anesthesia, it really comes down to personal feel, how you will feel at a place and the vibe you get.

 

[powermd]

a classmate of mine did an away rotation at columbia as well, and said similar things as your friend. the above post from the resident is obviously a lot more comprehensive, but I did get the vibe that the PD isnt the biggest resident advocate. my friend also felt that about half of the attendings were happy to be there and happy to teach, whereas the other half had other motivation/reasons to be there. She had also mentioned that a few of the residents there had said to her that they feel like the attendings workforce. but i really feel that for most residencies, especially anesthesia, it really comes down to personal feel, how you will feel at a place and the vibe you get.

Don't judge our program by the vibe from our PD. She really doesn't have much interaction at all with residents, except to discuss evaluations, test scores, and other metrics of our progress twice yearly. Our assistant PD is a much more approachable person who is very involved in teaching, scheduling, and resident advocacy. Regarding the motivations of our attendings- tough to say for sure what motivates them. Many are openly critical of the institution and all the barriers to delivery of proper patient care, but clearly care about teaching residents. Some are cynical about the institution and all but ignore the problems (by not battling with surgeons or nurses over issues in patient care), and just focus on teaching. My understanding is that our attendings are well compensated for giving lectures, which is probably why we get them so consistently.