Free House!!

[PACtoDOC]

Anyone know any programs with killer benefits that stick out from the norm? I found a program by chance during my research of FM programs the last couple of years, that is not only an incredible program with residents who are top knotch, but also gives you a free house!!! Anyone else find anything as good as this? I would have ranked this program in my top 3-4 for sure, but the benefits of great pay, and a free house put them over the top. I think this is why they can recruit the best resident classes I have ever seen. But I don't want to say that this is my top program out there if there is something better (I cannot imagine a better program though in all seriousness). And man, this program is competitive obviously with benefits like this. I think their USMLE average is higher than many specialties.

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[FP Attending DO]

Sounds like a good deal to me. Sounds rural.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Peeshee]

What program is it?

 

[PACtoDOC]

What program is it?

A program in Pa. Drop me a PM if you need specifics.

 

[Peperules]

I'm a resident at the program the original poster is talking about. I know it sounds to good to be true, but there really isn't any trick to it. The program could no doubt survive without the benefits, but I will say that the benefits here are far and away the best I've seen. In addition to your base salary ~38k-40K the program provides:
Free house-anywhere from 2-5 bedrooms depending on the size of your family.
free electricity
free water
free gas
free maintenence including lawn and snow
Free DSL
Unbelievable health plan including free meds for your family
Free Healthclub (Cameron center-can be linked from hospital home page)
free food for residents on all duty days.
I know I'm beginning to sound a bit like a gameshow host, but I would say in terms of Quality of Life, our salary would be comparable to 60-70K. Only bad thing is that taxes are a bit high in PA.
One of the best parts of the housing is that all the residents live within 1/2mile of each other. We have a built in community and support for the spouses is readily available.
The point of the benefits is to let us as residents, concentrate on the training. Our program is not the easiest one out there, but when you leave here, you will be trained to do pretty much any aspect of FP you want including C-sections as primary if you desire the training.
The program is about 45 minutes from Pittsburgh in Washington, PA. Sorry PACtoDoc, but it was just a matter of time. Doesn't sound like you will have any problem getting your first choice anyway
If any one has any other questions, please feel free to email me. I will say that no matter what program you are interested in, you should at least take a look at this one.

 

[raptor5]

From their website "The hospital neighborhood is extremely safe and promotes a unique sense of closeness and opportunity for socializing among the residents and their families." Sounds very stepford wives to me.

 

[PACtoDOC]

I'm a resident at the program the original poster is talking about. I know it sounds to good to be true, but there really isn't any trick to it. The program could no doubt survive without the benefits, but I will say that the benefits here are far and away the best I've seen. In addition to your base salary ~38k-40K the program provides:
Free house-anywhere from 2-5 bedrooms depending on the size of your family.
free electricity
free water
free gas
free maintenence including lawn and snow
Free DSL
Unbelievable health plan including free meds for your family
Free Healthclub (Cameron center-can be linked from hospital home page)
free food for residents on all duty days.
I know I'm beginning to sound a bit like a gameshow host, but I would say in terms of Quality of Life, our salary would be comparable to 60-70K. Only bad thing is that taxes are a bit high in PA.
One of the best parts of the housing is that all the residents live within 1/2mile of each other. We have a built in community and support for the spouses is readily available.
The point of the benefits is to let us as residents, concentrate on the training. Our program is not the easiest one out there, but when you leave here, you will be trained to do pretty much any aspect of FP you want including C-sections as primary if you desire the training.
The program is about 45 minutes from Pittsburgh in Washington, PA. Sorry PACtoDoc, but it was just a matter of time. Doesn't sound like you will have any problem getting your first choice anyway
If any one has any other questions, please feel free to email me. I will say that no matter what program you are interested in, you should at least take a look at this one.

Well the secret is definitely out! But its a good thing probably, because it will just add to the quality of the residents, which quite frankly could not be any better. I have spent a lot of money going to programs I thought were the best of the best in FP, and I still have a few more to visit. But this one stands out to me because of several things, even exclusive of the free house!!

1) Absolutely incredible program director, who seems to know the answer to everything medical and non medical. I have seen programs where the PD is not the sharpest tack in the box. This guy is perhaps the best PD I have met, followed closely by Jeremy Fish MD in Contra Costa, Ca and Reid Blackwelder at ETSU, Kingsport, Tn. From my military experience, I know for a fact that it is highly important to have an incredible leader, and this guy takes the award I think.

2) Residents who would make you think you were in a branch clinic of Hopkins or Mayo. All of the guys and gals I met at this place were stellar. My big thing was that I did not want to end up in a place where I felt my upper levels were not confident. Every resident I met here gave me a little shiver of that intimidation factor, and I loved that. I felt like they all wanted to be FP's and were not sent here because they couldn't get in to their Derm residency of choice. And maybe they had all been warned to be real nice and cordial the day I was there, but I don't think they were faking at all. I think a program like this naturally recruits the same type of people year after year.

3) Great Pod living environment like I was used to in the military. I mean even if these houses were not free, I would gladly to pay to live just like this. It is incredibly comforting to know that my family is less than 150 yards from me at all times, and that when I am gone they have the other families to hang out with. When I lived in military base housing, we used to hang out on each other's porches, and cut each other's yards. This is exactly the same thing. Some people won't like it because it is less private, but I believe families need each other for support. Its like one big support group on the same street, and it would really put me at ease knowing that I could seriously walk up the street and check on a patient of mine any moment I felt like it, or even go see them in the ER. That is the kind of person I am, and that is the kind of lifestyle I plan on living until eternity. So to have my family right there with me makes me feel less guilty about devoting so much of myself to my patients. I know of no other arrangement like this anywhere in any specialty.

And bonus: if you like to work out a lot like I do, this gym they give you and your family a membership to is the nicest gym I have ever seen in my life. I am not sure how it got placed on a country road in rural Pennsylvania, but hec I'll take it.

FYI Pep, I'll be doing a medicine sub-I there this year. Did I meet you by chance in April during my visit?

Lastly, the one downside to this program. Because of the region in general, there is virtually no diversity of any sorts. It is the typical small Pa town that is 99% caucasion. Being from a border state, I find it odd when I don't see my fellow Mexican-Americans working in all the less desirable jobs. I had to take a double take when I saw the lady cleaning my hotel room spoke English. I have grown up with Spanish as my back-up language and it will be really strange not hearing it or seeing these people any more. But on the flipside, Pittsburgh is one of the coolest cities you could ever hope for with tons of culture, and it is only about 35 minutes away.

 

[rustedcj7]

Lastly, ...because of the region in general, there is virtually no diversity of any sorts. It is the typical small Pa town that is 99% caucasion.

I was really interested until I read this last part but not anymore.

 

[Caverject]

I was really interested until I read this last part but not anymore.

When you quote people, you really should not quote them out of context. It makes P2D look like a racist, when clearly he is not.

Lastly, the one downside to this program....because of the region in general, there is virtually no diversity of any sorts. It is the typical small Pa town that is 99% caucasion.

 

[espbeliever]

dah! i have no idea the program name yet, but of the top 4-5 on my list i plan to study about, none of them are from that area. i want a strong unopposed program with lots of procedures. is this place like that??

 

[Peperules]

FYI,
In terms of demographics, around 82% of Washington PA. is Anglo, around 15% is African-American. These numbers are fairly well reflected in our pt population and are similar to the demographics of most NE states I believe.
Our program is unopposed and you will get as many procedures as you want. The bottom line is that if you show interest in a particular field, someone will teach you what you need to know.

 

[PACtoDOC]

FYI,
In terms of demographics, around 82% of Washington PA. is Anglo, around 15% is African-American. These numbers are fairly well reflected in our pt population and are similar to the demographics of most NE states I believe.
Our program is unopposed and you will get as many procedures as you want. The bottom line is that if you show interest in a particular field, someone will teach you what you need to know.

Peperules, you have a private message.

Actually Peperules is right on the money regarding the official demographics of the area. And I only spent one day in the hospital and two days in the town, so I certainly am no expert on the region. I just know what I felt as I was there for the 2 days I was there. Here where I am, we have a rather "melting pot" distribution of people and patients, and in teaching institutions like JPS where we do our clinicals, we have mostly Hispanic and African American patients. All I am saying is that some people might not feel comfortable in this situation if you are used to seeing lots of minority patients and enjoy doing such. I am only trying to be honest about the way I personally felt about the area. As I stated above, for me, this is the only real drawback to the region in general. I can't obviously know how some people would feel in this situation as I only see the world through my own set of eyes based on my own experiences in my culture.

I just find it a bit unusual to see almost exclusively caucasian people in the course of a weekend. I sort of felt like I was watching "The Truman Show" because my sense of reality changed completely while I was there. I have to admit that when I first showed up there, I had not been on the hospital tour for 2 hours before I said to my wife that I honestly did not feel comfortable there. I really felt out of my element but over the course of the day, I realized that even though people's skin color might have been a little lighter, that there were still all "flavors" represented. In fact, while on rounds with the med team that day, I was pleasantly surprised when one of the inmate patients (who was to me a normal looking caucasian guy) who we had just seen, ran out of the hospital and stole the pizza delivery guy's car and booked!! Ah, alas, Washington was not completely isolated from the real world!!!

But it was just unusual as I said to have gone to the grocery store, the elementary school, the hospital, my hotel, shopping downtown, and to fill up with gas and have every interaction be with a caucasian person. Even the road workers, the hotel cleaning personnel, and the landscaping people at the hotel were all white. I swear I nearly hugged this black guy I saw in the parking lot at Target because I was so happy to see I was in fact NOT in 1945's Berlin, Germany!! I think a lot of the diversity there is due to the college in the town, and since I did not visit it, that may be why I saw less people of color.

But as I said earlier, the quality of the residents and the people I met who were faculty, nurses, and even patients eased my fear regarding this issue. And now I don't want this thread to degrade to a racial discussion when it does not need to be about that. Rest assured that wherever a residency program is located there will always be underserved patients of many varieties. Sure, would I prefer the place to be crawling with Mexicans and for there to be taco joints on every corner, yes! But, being Pa is a "blue state" should tell you that there is diversity among people even if it is not always of the pigmented nature.

 

[Peeshee]

Thanks for all the information about this program! It's great to see people sharing both the good and bad of a program. I also think the patient population is important bec. some people like to use their language skills at the hospital, so thanks a lot for sharing that.

 

[PACtoDOC]

When you quote people, you really should not quote them out of context. It makes P2D look like a racist, when clearly he is not.

Thanks for having my back Caverject, but I did not get the feeling that I was being misquoted. I thought it was simply to cut down on the wording of the quote and get to the meat of it. I have to admit though, I have been called a lot of things, but a racist is not one of them Something tells me that my father's half of my family would really hamper my membership into the local Arian Nation Viva Mexico!! But on the other side of the coin, my Irish/English mother would probably not be invited to join either since she had one of those "mixed" kids in myself!! Racist I am not; Realist I am. Also, my wife is from one of those small Pa towns where you don't see many people of color, and I still love to go there. They might not be able to make you a plate of tacos al carbon, but then again you can't get stromboli or pierrogies in Texas!! Thats an acceptable trade for me

 

[PACtoDOC]

I was really interested until I read this last part but not anymore.

If you were interested before, you should not let what I said change that. It is very much like any other small town in the NE, but then again any other small town in the NE is not LA, SF, Chicago, NYC, Phili, or any other major city. If you are considering going to an unopposed program in general, you are likely to find yourself in a place where there is less diversity. But remember, this is the north, not the south. Had I been really interested in a program like this in Georgia or for instance like the one I am interested in in Spartanburg, SC, I might be a little more concerned. The south is notoriously bad about diversity issues. If you found a small town where there was 82% white in the south, you could bet that life as a minority would be significantly different than life as a minority in Washington, Pa. My wife has a sister with 2 kids that we are basically helping her raise, and they have an AA father. It should tell you something to know that I would be comfortable having them live close by in Washington, Pa, and they will if I end up going there.

 

[raptor5]

If you were interested before, you should not let what I said change that. It is very much like any other small town in the NE, but then again any other small town in the NE is not LA, SF, Chicago, NYC, Phili, or any other major city.

That's Philly to you. JK