MarquetteGuy said:
Dear DPMgrad, if you don't mind, I noticed that you had mentioned you were currently in your third year of a PM&S residency. I was wondering if you could tell me more about your experience, what residency program you are in, what type of experiences you've had there, and if you've had any trouble trying to locate jobs after the completion of your residency. If there is any other relavent information pertaining to your residency experience that you wouldn't mind passing along, I would be happy to hear anything you have to offer. Thank you very much.
I am completing one of the PM&S-36 residency programs in the greater Philadelphia area. My experiences at my residency program has been a positive one. I have had adequate exposure and experience in various surgical procedure ranging from the forefoot to reconstructive rearfoot procedures. I am lucky in that most of the Orthopedic Surgeons are very Podiatry friendly at my hospital. Hence, I am fortunately enough to be trained by both Orthopedic Surgeons and Podiatric Surgeons due to the good relationship between Podiatry and Orthopedic Surgery. Since there are no Orthopedic Surgery residents at my hospital, we pretty much serve as the Orthopedic Surgery residents at my hospital. If there was a problem with an Orthopedic patient on the floors, the nurses would contact the Podiatry resident on call. This would also mean that we scrub in on most Orthopedic surgical cases, such as Total Knee Replacement and Total Hip Replacement. Our non Podiatry rotations include Behavior Science, Pathology, Radiology, Infectious Disease, Dermatology, General / Vascular Surgery, Internal Medicine, ER, Anesthesia, Orthopedic Surgery. All of my non Podiatry rotations have been very hands on. In my Anesthesia rotation, I am intubating patients, running an entire MAC sedation case, etc... We are also treated equivalent to the corresponding resident or intern on the service. In my Internal Medicine and General Surgery rotations, we function like any other resident or intern on these services. When on those services, we are responsible of admitting the patients, doing complete H&P, managing the patients on the floor, etc.... We also take in house call when on Internal Medicine and General Surgery rotations.
During my podiatry rotations, we are responsible for seeing patients in private practice offices and clinics. We also do daily rounds on patients that we have in-house and hospital consults. We are expect to follow the patients preoperatively, intraoperatively, and postoperatively. Of course, we also scrub in all of the foot and ankle surgical cases (both from Podiatric Surgeons and Orthopedic Surgeons). My residency program is not one of those super high surgical volume residency program. However, we do get adequate amount of surgical cases where we far supercede the minimal numbers required for the PM&S-36 residency program.
As for being on call, we are fortunate in that we take call from home. Since we do take call from home, we are expected to live within reasonable driving distance to the hospital. Currently, we are on call every 3rd night during the weeknights and every 3rd weekend (fri-sun). While being on call, we usually respond to ER consults, hospital consults, weekend or night emergency surgical cases, handling calls from several physician offices answer services that require immediate attention, rounding on the weekends, etc... On the average, I usually get to the hospital between 6:30 - 8:00 am and do not get home before 6 or 7 pm. Sometimes, I have to come in earlier or stay later depending how much work I have to do and the rotation that I am on. I know that the married residents in my residency program have been able to balance their family life with the residency quite well.
In my residency program, there are didactic activities that residents are required to participate. Each resident in my program is responsible for giving a lecture at one of the General Surgery Grand Rounds annually. We also participate in jounal clubs, workshops, lectures, cadaver lab, x-ray rounds. We also have access to online lecture, quizzes, and tutorials to further augment our didactic activities. As you learn more about residency programs, you will hear about something called PRESENT software, which is an online learning tool that supplies podiatric lectures and online quizzes to augment podiatric residency didactic activities. However, my residency program does not utilizes PRESENT software. We utilize the Orthopedic Surgery residency equivalent version of PRESENT software. My residency director also encourages us to participate in various lectures and workshop off site with our allotted CME money. I have had the opportunity to participate in courses such as the ACFAS Ankle Arthroscopy course, ACFAS Advanced Ex Fix Course (Taylor Spatial Frame), AO/ASIF Comprehensive and Advanced Podiatry Courses, etc... By completing various courses, we (or any residents that meet the criterias) have the opportunity to apply for the Kurgan Ilizarov Mini Fellowship in Russia or AO/ASIF Fellowship. I have been accepted to do an AO/ASIF Fellowship in Europe but unfortunately, I will be doing my AO/ASIF Fellowship in late 2006 or early 2007, which would be after my completion of my residency training. There is currently a backlog of Podiatric Surgeons waiting to do AO/ASIF Fellowship. My residency director also encourages us to participate in research or possibly writing a publishable paper. Lastly, the residents also have an opportunity to work with third or fourth year podiatry student externs (Scholl students begin their externships in the latter half of their 3rd year while all of the other students do their externships in their 4th year).
As for job search, I have a couple of job offers in the surrounding NJ, DE, and PA areas. Some jobs offers are better than others. In my job search, I chose to concentrate in the Northeast, where most of my family are located. I am focusing on joining an existing Podiatry group, multispecialty group, or an Orthopedic group. With my job search ending, I am now focusing my attention on preparing for both Podiatric Surgery and Podiatric Medicine board exams.
I am sorry for the long post. Hopefully, I have answered most of your questions. My best advice for you is to visit and spend time at various residency programs that you are interested in. Choose programs that would best suited for your needs. For example, if you are very dedicated to your family life, a high surgical volume residency program with many in hospital calls may not be very ideal for you, despite the high surgical volume. On the other hand, if you are single and eager to scrub in as many surgical cases as you can, perhaps a high surgical volume residency program may be for you. For me, some of the top residency programs in the country (such as Seattle program, Tucker, West Penn, Inova Fairfax, etc...) never appealed to me, even though, I had grades to get into one of those programs. In fact, I would probably be very miserable in those programs, despite the training. I am happy with my residency program. I wish you best of luck on your residency search. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away.
It would be nice that other current residents would post their experiences here as well.
