B-more2005 said:
Has anyone been scheduled for any interview for a hospital GPR? If anyone has gone through the interview process last year and would like to comment on the whole interview process it would be appreciated.
I can share my experiences with you. I interviewed with 3 GPRs last year in the NYC area. They really differed in formats. At Methodist Hospital, it was 1 on 1 with the program director. At Mt. Sinai (which is where I matched), it was 3 people - the program director, a faculty member, and the second year GPR resident - and me. At Long Island College Hospital, it was me versus like 10 people on their committee sitting around a table staring at me. They all had questions like "Why do you want to do a GPR?" and "Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?" and "Where do you want to practice?" and "What is 1 good thing and 1 bad thing about dentistry?" and other bs like that.
For me, I knew I was going to apply to ortho after my GPR, so I told them upfront during my GPR interviews. I didn't want to attend a GPR where my decision to specialize would not be supported. One of the programs gave me a hard time at the interview when I told them this and subsequently, I ranked them last. The other 2 didn't mind that I wanted to apply to specialize.
Make sure you talk to the current residents to get a feel for how they are surviving in the program and if they think they will be prepared well when they are finished. They are the best indicators of the program, not the administrative people. Questions you can ask them include - Are there lectures you have to attend? How much experience do you get in ____ discipline? How is the on-call, do you have to stay in-house or can you be at home? What is expected of you if you are on-call? Can you moonlight? How many patients do you see per day? How many assistants are there, what do they do? Who schedules the patients, you or the staff? How are the attendings? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this program? How many residents are there? Are there specialty programs at this hospital, an does that affect the kinds of cases you do? What kind of patients make up the patient base at this hospital? And so on, you get the idea.
Good luck!
