Hi amLOLdipine,
I'm one of the chief residents. If I were applying this cycle, I would have the same question.
Every year the ACGME sends out an anonymous survey to every resident about their program. Over the last 2 years, there was a trend that Emory residents weren't as satisfied with the program which initiated a site visit in the spring of 2016. As part of the cohort that prompted the survey, I will say that our issues fell into three categories. (Really the last one would have fixed the first two without us having to "go nuclear" on the ACGME survey.)
1. Between Emory University Hospital (5th largest solid organ transplant center, Ebola!), Grady (one of the country's largest public hospitals/level 1 trauma centers), our clinical education is hard to top. We're also the only anesthesiology residency program in Atlanta. If there's a zebra case, we're going to do it! But the program got lazy and our formal didactics were an afterthought. (Since our board pass rate has been/is 100%, I think the administration didn't feel there was anything to fix.) Most were keyword based and there was no rhyme or reason on how they were assigned. For example, as a CA-1 I was given a keyword on OB anesthesia to present. This was before I had done OB and the audience was mostly CA-1 residents who hadn't done it either! Our grand rounds were also CA-3 residents giving a grand rounds style lecture to mainly other residents with only a few faculty participating.
2. Residents did not like rotating at Emory University Hospital Midtown as CA-1s. The hospital is set up with both academic and private practice surgeons. The turnover is quick and your wake ups need to be fast. There is definitely a role for learning this in residency, but production pressure was hurting the new CA-1s ability to learn.
3. We had no one to voice these concerns to. This was really the biggest issue. Our PD was a nice guy, but between his OR and liver transplant call obligations, he didn't really know us.
After the ACGME site visit in the spring, the program did a 180.
1. Our didactics are so much better. Grand rounds are now what grand rounds should be which is evident in the number of faculty that voluntarily show up. They are still Tuesday afternoons. The first Tuesday is a visiting guest lecturer, second Tuesday is a research series (e.g. how to critically read and write papers, statistics, etc,) third Tuesday is journal club, and the fourth Tuesday is on professionalism (e.g. how to negotiate your first contract out of residency, types of disability/malpractice insurance, etc.) Our morning didactics make more sense and there is much more faculty involvement.
2. CA-1s don't rotate at Emory Midtown any more. This cost the department millions to hire anesthetists to replace the residents, but I think it shows how dedicated Dr Hill, our chair, is to our education.
3. We have a new PD - Dr. Williamson is amazing and truly cares about us. She meets with us regularly as a group and individually. She has met with leadership at all the sites we've rotated at and is always in our corner. She's also appointed an associate and assistant PD as additional resident support. If we need her, she's available 24/7.
What did the ACGME actually cite us for? Their citations were administrative. We weren't filling out our case logs, we weren't filling out our duty hours (I log mine daily and average 55-65/week depending on the rotation,) and no one was meeting with us on a regular basis to go over our performance. Honestly, except for our complaints about not having regular meetings with our PD, they seemed unimpressed.
As an MS-4, I interviewed all along the east and west coasts and one very, very cold stop in the middle. I didn't find another program that could compete with Emory's depth and breadth of training and still have a group of faculty and residents that were so fun and kind. I would happily rank Emory #1 again. The places I've interviewed and based on our fellowship match list, all seem to agree!
All 13 residents who applied for fellowships matched:
Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology:
Blaine Farmer: Wake Forest
Stephanie Opusunju: Johns Hopkins
Thomas Kessinger: Emory
Krupa Patel: Emory
Obstetric Anesthesiology:
Nely Dhariwal: Cedars Sinai
Paul Macias: Stanford
Pediatric Anesthesiology:
Michael Evans: Northwestern
Ashley Hamilton: Emory
Matt Rabito: Vanderbilt
Michael Smith: Johns Hopkins
Pain Management:
Kai-Ling Hsu: UVA
Gary Kao: St Luke’s-Roosevelt (Mount Sinai)
Regional Anesthesiology:
Jeff Mills: University of Florida
If I can answer anything else, please reply to this thread, PM me, or email me at
[email protected]
TL;DR - Our citations are all easily fixable/none have to do with our clinical training. We all love our new PD.
