county vs. private hospitals

[Beadle]

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For those of you who are current MS IIIs, can you please offer up some pros and cons of working at the different ends of the spectrum? I understand that if your school is a large complex, you might get to experience several buildings and hospitals (which I think is great). For me, I'm having to compare private vs county hospitals.

IN GENERAL, how do the two types of hospitals (private and county) differ?

+ efficiancy,
+ procedures you can/cannot do,
+ patient loads and how it affects the rest of the day,
+ overall schedule

those last two especially allude to the fact that i read so much on here that calls attention to residents who find themselves with absolutely nothing to do but wait. And wait some more. And then they get signed out like 3 hrs. later.



-----anyhow i'll edit this later, im so tired right now!

 

[dpmd]

It depends on the hospital, but generally:

County hospital-busy, lots of patients, ancillary services not the greatest (takes time to get studies and labs done, patient transport services takes forever so sometimes you have to take the patient somewhere if you need something done fast), "county mentality" (government jobs are secure so lazy, mean, or stupid staff members don't have to change, just like any job there is variability in quality of staff-but if you can't get rid of the bad ones it puts greater load on the rest and can burn them out), buttloads of work + little chance of reimbursement to attending for work done + less restrictions (usually)=you get to do a lot, more exposure to weird stuff that has progressed, treatment delays means some stuff is handled differently than usual

Private hospital-patients are paying customers of the attending who wants them to be happy, ancillary services usually decent to good, number of patients varies, more likely to have restrictions (at one hospital students weren't allowed to suture at all), more exposure to how treatment in the real world is done (unless you plan to practice out of a county facility)