Lefty,
Yes, I'm a DO. i have plenty of reasons for picking only allopathic programs. No, I did not rotate through any DO anesthesia programs. I didn't even think about osteopathic programs. So, perhaps my opinion is skewed, but I wasn't going to waste a month out of my third or fourth year to visit a small community hospital (which many DO hospitals are anyways).
1. Like I said before, you need volume of cases to learn from. A variety of patient populations. You need to learn from the sickest of the sick, the poorest of the poor. Sure, most of your patients will be healthy in the private sector, but what do you do when someone really sick comes through? You need confidence, otherwise you're toast. Also, you need to fulfill a certain number of cases in each rotation to graduate. the last thing you want is to be shipped off to another hospital far away just to get the volume you need. do you plan on paying for those hotel fees?
2. You need a ton of attendings to learn from. Whether they're great teachers or not might be another question. But you need to pick up practice habits from different people. Everyone has a different style. you need to develop your own. also you'll learn which attendings are dangerous/risky and which attendings are very conservative.
3. didactics might be better at an allopathic program. i don't know about that. if you have some famous attending lecturing to you in the OR, perhaps you might learn something useful. i assume everyone studies from the same books anyways, so i'll leave this one open.
4. You need a curriculum that will allow you to rotate through every type of surgery out there. That means you need to go through general anesthesia (uro, GI, etc..), OB, peds, neuro, cardiovascular, transplant, burns, ICU, regional anesthesia, trauma and so forth. you need exposure to them all. sure you might not want to do OB later, but how the hell do you know at this point in life?
4. if nothing else, you need a program that carries weight in the community. that means your program name will help you get your first job. anesthesia groups out there know which programs are pretty good. it doesn't mean you can't find a job if you're not in a top ten program. it simply means that groups want to be able to advertise that their docs are from the best programs in the country.
5. having very few residents in your program probably means more call for you. that really sucks. no back up. if you need time off, who's going to cover for you? the remaining two people who are already on q4? forget it. besides, how fun is happy hour with only one other resident?
6. location..is important. i think big cities are better. more exposure like I said in #1. if everyone in your hospital coverage area is caucasian, you might miss out on taking care of someone with diseases that are only common in african-americans, hispanics, etc...
7. if none of the above reasons makes sense, then consider the possibility that you might want to do a fellowship. how many DO programs offer stuff like CT/OB/neuro/ICU/pain/trauma fellowships? i doubt many do. If you do want to do a fellowship for whatever reason (job security, knowledge, procrastination), don't you at least want to have a secured position at your home base? I would.
besides, if i'm in a DO hospital, i might have to do some rib raising prior to starting the ventilator, or some HVLA prior to intubation. no thanks.
Go ahead, it doesn't matter, my conclusion is apparently the matched actually were the best fit for the job! Either way, we will ALL become board-certified Anesthesiologists well qualified to take care of patients someday! The Intern Team we have is a close-knit group of young docs eager to learn Anesthesiology.
