ork load, environment, lifestyle, quality of training, ability to land fellowships, department culture, location, commute times, competitiveness, etc. Thanks.
I'm a PGY2 resident at Baylor Houston so I can give you some info about our program. The Emory program I don't know anything about.
As far as work load goes it varies a great deal. We rotate through a number of different hospitals and settings. Generally on the inpatient side as a PGY2 you'll handle anywhere between 8-16 patients. One rotation you handle more but the attending does the notes for you. As a PGY3 is where your workload gets to be more, but that is also when you rotate through TIRR. There you can have as many as 22 patients. Efficiency is key when you have more patients. I don't usually feel overwelmed as a PGY2.
The environment I think is great. All the attendings I've worked with so far are really nice. The nursing/ therapy staff has also been great to work with.
Location is in the largest medical center in the world in Houston. Commute depends on where you want to live. Even though we rotate through so many hospitals, most of them are in the medical center and the couple that aren't are only like 5 minutes from it. So basically most residents I would say live 10-15 min away. Traffic can get bad, but if you don't live in the suburbs you'll mostly be fine. The traffic from the suburbs is terrible.
Lifestyle wise we do have a good amount of free time b/c as a PGY2 we take home call, so we get alot of weekends off. As a PGY3 at TIRR, we do in house call so we work more, but that's 6-8 months of PGY3 year. Houston is a big city is a developing night life. Some people like it, some don't, but that's true everywhere.
It's definitely a competitive program that will land you a good fellowship. Most of the graduating seniors got the fellowship that they wanted, 2 are even going into Pain.
I know that this isn't one of the talked about programs on this forum, partly b/c people have heard that we're a stagnant program with not much MSK, etc. Welll, I can definitely say that we're not a stagnant program, they have been working to make our experience much more diverse from the start of PGY2 year. We don't only do inpatient as a PGY2, some residents have gotten to do consults, some EMGs, and some outpt rotations. I think it's a good shakeup that keeps us from getting bored with all inpatient as a 2. As far as the MSK goes, they're working to improve that as well. One of the newer attendings does alot more MSK/Pain injection stuff so as his patient base improves, so will our exposure. I really don't believe that we're that malignant program that I heard so much about when I was applying a couple of years ago. They're making good changes.
Hope this helps.
