INOVA fairfax residency

[bluebirdie]

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Hi there,
Just wanted to know if anyone had any experience with this program and if they had any thoughts. I tried checking out the website, but wanted more info. Thanks!

 

[skapone33]

Just trying to get this going again since i had similar questions....anyone interview there this season? Thoughts?

 

[UVA07]

While I cannot fully comment on the residency there as I'm not a resident there. I did do 4 weeks of my pediatrics clerkship there so got to meet all the residents and see how their life is.

First the positives, the residents there all seem very happy. They work hard, but that is to be expected considering the hospital is a very busy service. You see everything there (I think we had one Kawasaki's patient a week, plus Beckwith-Wideman, Russell Silver, Cri du Chat all alone during my last week there). There is a good deal of standard bread and butter peds as well. Interns probably are carrying between 6-9 patients at a time. The team is made up of 3 interns and a senior with various amounts of medical students at a time. Interns take q4 call while seniors work on the night float system with subsequent short call. Call nights are busy, but when not on call most interns were leaving at 4-5 in the afternoon. The facilities are beautiful with a new PICU and huge NICU as their OB service delivers some ungodly number of children (over 10,000) per year. The floors are recently renovated and Child life is fantastic. Good anicallary services as a whole and a lot is computerized, though ordering and note taking as of 7 months ago was still on paper. Nursing staff there is great (Better than at my home hospital). You truly will see a large diversity of patients here of all classes, races, cultures and disease processes.

The negatives cannot be ignored, however. The hospitilist servicel, save one or two, are not the greatest people to work with. There are, of course, exceptions - but I found many of them uninspiring and willing to teach only occasionally. My attending was on service with me for 3 weeks and did a grand total of 1 hour long session with the medical students and interns. Morning report occurs every morning and is adequate and instead of a daily noon conference, there is one day of scheduled teaching which can drag on for a while.

However, here is the biggest downfall. All of the attendings (including all peds subspecialists - which every subspecialty is accounted for) are able to write orders as they are private physicians with privileges there. A lot of them happen to be good teachers as well, but you will spend a good portion of your day (as many of the interns do) going back and forth between charts checking as to what each subspecialist wanted and ordered. Some of the more complex patients, this can take a while. They are supposed to round almost every day with the primary team - but this rarely happens consistently. Even the hospitilist attendings write a ton of orders so they can make a quick change to a patient and not let anyone know leaving it up to the intern to constantly do "chart checks" in hopes to stay up on the care of the child. Point being is that the role of most of the residents there tends to be fairly secondary as they spend the bulk of their time filling out discharge summaries, tracking down all the attendings in on the care, dealing with the overnight issues and acting as a go between in telling all of the other attendings in on the care what each one is doing - its a ton of scut work and very little active group decision making. Plus, so many other residents rotate through there (INOVA family, georgetown med/peds, army family medicine) that there are constantly new faces on the inpatient teams. Good if you like to mix it up a bit, but bad as there are always people you see just for a month and then never again.

Hope this helps, some good positives and some important negatives. The chairman, Dr. Ascher, I think is fantastic though and is trying to bring some huge improvements. Probably one of the better community hospital programs around as their peds subspecialist presence is huge and very good. But it is definitely a different feel than your general academic peds service.

 

[Stitch]

I interviewed here in 2005 and was quite impressed. UVA above gives a great first hand account, but I'd just add that I think the progam is one which will be getting better and better. The director really wants to focus on teaching and good training (at least that was my impression at the time) and the facilities were extremely nice. It's actually a hospital where I might like to one day become an attending.

 

[MissKiddieDoc]

I have also spent some time doing a clerkship there. The residents are really awesome. The new program director seems very well liked by everyone and seems very promising. I see this program going places. It is already well recognized in the area and east USA as being a good program. Hopefully with time, the word will spread even farther.

 

[USMELL]

any updates on this program

 

[freddydpt]

I'm a Georgetown TY resident rotating inpatient peds right now, so I can only comment on the wards. So, no bs'ing I actually asked my PD if I could do another month of peds instead of medicine... I got denied, but just lets you know how much I like it. q4 overnight as an intern (its busy), the residents are really the friendliest I've worked with out of everyone. The conferences are great. Teaching is done by attendings, residents, medical students all in various formats between 8-10 and 11-11:30 every day. The pathology at Fairfax is rediculous... you really just have to experience it. I rotated at CNMC as a med student and I see much more interesting things at Fairfax (large immigrant population). This week's roster: Angelman's, Kawasaki x 3, hyperbili's, malaria... bread and butter stuff too, pneumonias, diabetes, osteo, etc. The hospitalists I've worked with so far have all been very good teachers. The subspecialists sometimes write their own orders and sometimes don't. I prefer if they do so pt care advances. I'm not someone who is too bashful to call and discuss the pt.

Anyway, just puttin' my 2 cents in... great program. Good luck all!

 

[USMELL]

I'm a Georgetown TY resident rotating inpatient peds right now, so I can only comment on the wards. So, no bs'ing I actually asked my PD if I could do another month of peds instead of medicine... I got denied, but just lets you know how much I like it. q4 overnight as an intern (its busy), the residents are really the friendliest I've worked with out of everyone. The conferences are great. Teaching is done by attendings, residents, medical students all in various formats between 8-10 and 11-11:30 every day. The pathology at Fairfax is rediculous... you really just have to experience it. I rotated at CNMC as a med student and I see much more interesting things at Fairfax (large immigrant population). This week's roster: Angelman's, Kawasaki x 3, hyperbili's, malaria... bread and butter stuff too, pneumonias, diabetes, osteo, etc. The hospitalists I've worked with so far have all been very good teachers. The subspecialists sometimes write their own orders and sometimes don't. I prefer if they do so pt care advances. I'm not someone who is too bashful to call and discuss the pt.

Anyway, just puttin' my 2 cents in... great program. Good luck all!

thanks for your post, can you comment on Georgetown Pedi residency also. thanks

 

[summer123]

any recent updates on inova fairfax residency? georgetown residency?