How important is "seeing it all" in residency?

[Maybedoc1]

MS4 here trying to decide on my rank list. I’m fortunate to have received a number of interviews from many great programs, but I have no idea how I’m going to rank them. I have a tentative top 8 in no particular order:

Mass Gen
University of Washington
Stanford
Brigham and Women's
Mayo (Rochester)
UCLA
Colorado
Utah

Some of these programs are famous but in cities with 6 other residency programs (MGH and Brigham) while some are less well known but huge referral centers for multistate regions and have multiple different hospitals that you rotate through (Colorado and UWashington for example). Some of these programs see the most complex cases, but relatively little trauma. Some rotate through knife and gun clubs as well as big university hospitals. Some rotate through top pediatric hospitals. Some do cardiac imaging, while others do not. Some only see post op liver or kidney transplant, while others see post op transplant of every organ, etc. At the end of the day how much does seeing “everything” matter during training? I have no idea if I want to do more general private practice radiology or more sub specialized academic radiology at this point. I'm also considering ESIR, but need more exposure in residency to decide.

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[MadRadLad]

All will be good enough and have their own pros and cons. Unless there is something of particular interest, picking by location is more practical. None of these are small or unknown programs, they will all see tons of pathology. And you will never "see it all" in residency. You have to hit your weak points outside of it.

IR is the only wild card. Some of these places are very different for IR due to local turf issues. For diagnostics, it will be 90% the same stuff dressed in different ways.

 

[Radology]

When you’re talking about programs like these, these differences are Not important at all.

seeing rare genetic peds cases is about as low yield as you can possibly get in radiology, unless you are going into a peds fellowship (in which case you learn it anyway).

Same goes for cardiac

Go where you want to live and have the best prospects for local jobs. That’s honestly all that matters

 

[Maybedoc1]

All will be good enough and have their own pros and cons. Unless there is something of particular interest, picking by location is more practical. None of these are small or unknown programs, they will all see tons of pathology. And you will never "see it all" in residency. You have to hit your weak points outside of it.

IR is the only wild card. Some of these places are very different for IR due to local turf issues. For diagnostics, it will be 90% the same stuff dressed in different ways.

When you’re talking about programs like these, these differences are Not important at all.

seeing rare genetic peds cases is about as low yield as you can possibly get in radiology, unless you are going into a peds fellowship (in which case you learn it anyway).

Same goes for cardiac

Go where you want to live and have the best prospects for local jobs. That’s honestly all that matters

Thank you both for your replies! I’m getting down to the wire here in regards to my rank list, but it seems like from what everyone has said there isn’t much difference between these programs even if some are much bigger brand names than others. I can see rare genetic pediatric cases and cardiac being niche, but what about things like penetrating trauma? Or late stage presentations at safety net hospitals? I’m guessing that in a perfect world you would like to have all of the above, but it’s fine if you don’t?

 

[MadRadLad]

Thank you both for your replies! I’m getting down to the wire here in regards to my rank list, but it seems like from what everyone has said there isn’t much difference between these programs even if some are much bigger brand names than others. I can see rare genetic pediatric cases and cardiac being niche, but what about things like penetrating trauma? Or late stage presentations at safety net hospitals? I’m guessing that in a perfect world you would like to have all of the above, but it’s fine if you don’t?

All of this also depends on where you want to work.

Penetrating trauma is uncommon in some locations and very common in others. It's not rocket science either, even if you don't get a lot of it you can learn it with some extra work. Just like anything else. The bigger things that hard hard to replace are stuff like procedural exposure, how much teaching you get, maybe exposure to more advanced imaging/higher end cases as a resident vs everything getting turfed to fellows.

 

[CorneliaSt]

I had a friend graduate from the Colorado program not too long ago. They did A TON of night float. Sounded awful, honestly. I went to a different program (on this list), which was much more lifestyle friendly.

 

[jambro]

I had a friend graduate from the Colorado program not too long ago. They did A TON of night float. Sounded awful, honestly. I went to a different program (on this list), which was much more lifestyle friendly.

What would you call "a ton"?