Their faculty has been in a huge state of flux and as a rotating student through there it was awful.
Yipes!
I'm a current resident at Fairfax and I wanted to get a word in.
There have been several changes in the program recently, and the great majority of them have been good.
1. The department chair, who began to phase himself out about three years ago, officially left last year and the replacement that was hired didn't do very well. He left about 8 months ago after less than a year with the program.
HOWEVER, one of the long-standing gen surg attendings at Fairfax has stepped in as the interim chair and will potentially be the offiicial chair. He's a great guy, well-liked, and has some good ideas for the program and the department. All of us residents are extremely happy with the change.
2. The long-standing program director has decided to step down from his PD-ship (he is going to be heading the GME dept for the hospital) and his replacement will be starting soon. Nothing fishy there, old PD not fired from the program. He's just slowing down his clinical work as he gets a little older (sorry, sir). His replacement has been at IFH for about a year now, he's very well liked, and the residents are also really excited about the changes that he promises to bring. He has experience as assistant PD and interim PD at several other programs.
3. Several new hospital-employeed surgeons, including a few breast surgeons, two great new trauma surgeons, and a MIS surgeon, as well as a few new private practice surgeons (specifically, three new vascular surgeons) have been added on to the teaching service recently. They've been welcomed with open arms and have been a great addition to the program.
4. The Kaiser general surgeons that once operated a ton at IFH have now moved most of their cases to another local hospital. The exception is that their hepatobiliary and pancreatic procedures (liver resections, Whipples) are still being done at IFH. Because of the increase in volume from the other surgical groups, this loss has not detrimentally impacted the case numbers of the residents.
I'm sorry that this student didn't have a good experience at Fairfax, but I think I speak for most of the residents when I say that we work at a busy, friendly, well-staffed hospital that provides great operative numbers, excellent teaching, and exposure to a variety of practice settings. I have excellent working relationships, as well as friendships, with most of my fellow residents. The attendings are almost entirely volunteer (that is, they choose to teach and they choose to work with us in the OR) and they are almost without exception a great group of people. There is very little malignancy in the program.
Our program is the newest in the country, as far as I know, as it started only 8 years ago, but we have gotten better and attracted more talented residents every year. Our last two classes of chiefs have matched at:
Endocrine: Mayo
Breast: USC
Critical Care: U of Hawaii
MIS: Mayo
MIS: Beth Israel
Plastics: UT Houston
Hope this info helps. The program isn't perfect, none are, but the above post made it sound like we are in disarray, and I don't think that's true at all.
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