The flow of residents is generally from east coast (MGH, Hopkins) to west coast (UCSF). If you ask the UCSF cardiology fellows who trained at MGH/Hopkins (and to a lesser extent BWH) what brought them to UCSF, most of them will describe factors like "family" and "San Francisco" but few will admit to "the program" or "the quality of the residents".
Being on call as a fellow at Moffitt is described as worse than intern call at Hopkins/MGH, largely because the fellows do not have the power to block consults from the medicine residents who mindlessly auto-consult to "rule out cardiogenic shock" and the anesthesia/surgery residents who mindlessly auto-consult for "pre-op eval". The fellows aren't really permitted to chastise the interns and residents to think for themselves because the chair is too concerned about generating consult revenue and being in the good graces of anesthesia and surgery that you will get called into his office and get a good talking to for your "bad attitude" if the interns and residents speak up about their hurt feelings.
-AT.
It's really sad that there is a fellow as bitter as the above poster. As a resident at UCSF I can say that it is quite rare to find such an attitude among housestaff and fellows. UCSF breeds a truly a collegeal environment, despite the rigorous training. The cards fellows generally are helpful, and for the most part they are only abused on their consult service (one of their most brutal months) by surgery. Medicine rarely ever consults cards except for procedures or weekend echos. When we do consult for other stuff, it's usually our attng's call, not ours. Not to be too cocky, but we can handle our own. As for the inpatient cardiology servcies, the fellows are really only back-up on the CCU patients. The residents run the service and the fellows do procedures. We are the one's in the trenches making minute to minute decisions.
As for the "east to west" bs comment, last year our residents matched quite well on the east coast. 11/11 matching: Off the top of my head: MGH x2, columbia, duke, michigan, cleveland clinic, followed by UCSF, UCLA, Cedars-Sinai, harbor-ucla, and utah on the west coast. I think location dominates the cards matching process over all else, as most of these people were going back to their home towns and uniformily got their 1st choice from the get-go. Among applicants this year, everyone is getting ALL of their interviews, east and west. It's true that UCSF cardiology has a ton of people from boston, but it has more to do w/ the UCSF residents choosing to leave, than our program having a bias towards the east coast.
Anyway, Dr. "AT", if you are a cards fellow here, it's a bummer your experience has been so sad, cause most of the fellows are pretty cool people and seem quite content. Maybe there's a reason Crawford has been scolding you?
