Let me begin by saying that I am a current resident at NYU anesthesia & interviewed at all other programs in the NY area & east coast and decided on NYU for the reasons below:
Typical day begins 7:30am Tisch/Langone & 8am Bellevue, Wed. there is M&M and start is an hour later respectively. Number of hours a week is somewhere around 50-60 with call; now when on ICU your hours are more but never >80/week. I am out by 4:00p & depending if I have pre-ops I can be finished by 4:30p. Call is typically Q5-7 and progressively increases as you become more senior with more responsibilities & tougher cases.
Conferences: Mon: 4-5p, M&M Tue: 5-6p (by far the longest day), Grand rounds wed 7-8a, PBL conf thur 4:30-5:30p (we refer to it as beer rounds).
Note: We rotate at VA, Bellevue, Tisch & HJD
Call is different depending which hospital youre at Bellevue or Tisch.
Bellevue call is 6 residents: 1-team captain, 1-senior, 2-juniors, 1-ob, 1-SICU/TRACC, great group of people, dinner picked up by attending on call. You can get traumas, emergent, urgent cases from all specialties. This is where you get a good majority of your experience & develop your skills & learn from more experienced people.
Tisch call is 1-Ca-1 & 1- Ca2/Ca3- no frills here, just emergent cases and being up all night is hit or miss. Usually a good amount of pre-ops to be completed a majority of the time Ive slept most times.
Residency director: Dr. Wajda is genuinely interested in improving our residency and this is evident throughout the year as we have conferences on feedback and are approached on several topics and how to improve them. He cant change everything at an instant but in talking to people things are better than they were 5 yrs even 3yrs ago. Probably the most chill pd I met hands down as hes only a few years removed from residency and can relate with us.
Chair: Dr. Blanck is involved in all facets of our learning but is very hands off, how many people can say that about their program chairs? Where I came from the chair was in everyones business. Not so from Dr. Blanck, hes the master of a finely tuned machine that is heads above others. Well respected in the arena of research & academics, additionally cares about improving the program with what he has to work with.
Residents are a great mesh of people from all paths of life. There is a good amount of singles, married and somewhere in between people. Graduates are highly respected, the NYU name is well known throughout the country, and there is no difficulty of obtaining jobs in either academic or private positions. Half if not more than of the CA -3s are pursing fellowships (Cardiac, Peds, Pain). In a nutshell residents are honest, genuine, hardworking, & charismatic. You would be hard pressed to find a better group of residentsno cut throat tactics but honest teaching and learning from the top down esp TCs & Ca-3s on call.
Attendings are receptive, friendly and willing to teach if youre willing to learn. Ca-1s are teamed up with a mentor for the month of July w/o call. Like any program there are some that are less than spectacular; but even these have something to teach. In my opinion the vast majority of the attendings are genuinely interested in your well being & furthering your education.
Cardiac: Probably the longest hours but most residents will get very comfortable with B&B cardiac & can opt to do more in there Ca-3 year. Great Cardiac attendings: Dr. Kanchuger, Schlame, Rabinowitz, Ngai, Morganstern, Jackson, Rim etc. very willing to show you how to become comfortable with cardiac & thoracic cases.
Peds: By far most peoples favorite rotation primarily because of the head of peds anesthesia, Dr. Stjepanovic. Others that are pleasure to work and concurrently teach are Castro-Frenzel, Win, Hartmanssgruber & Marable.
Regional: Most programs cant boast of the regional people that they have, we on the other hand: Dr. Rosenberg, Dr. Popovic, & Dr. Morimoto. Yearly presentations at PGA and ASA in regional have made our regional tops in the east. Only other comparable program would have to be HSS. Mostly U/S guided and a few stimulating cath procedures but most graduating Ca-3s feel very confident after they finish at HJD with regional that they can perform the procedure in practice. We far and exceed our numbers in regional (acgme requires only 50).
Pain: We have great Pain service with some well respected Pain docs with Dr. Gharibo and Dr. Dubois. We complete 2 months of pain (chronic & acute service). Most people either like or completely dislike pain, nonetheless we have pain, not all programs can say they have an anesthesia ACGME accredited pain program with 3 fellows/year.
OB: 10- 12 weeks with 2-3 weeks of nights. This is split b/w Tish & Bellevue. Most people say that by the end of a 1-week at tisch you would have placed 150 epidurals and can almost do them in your sleep. We have great attendings that are more than willing to teach different techniques to place an epidural (lateral decubitus vs upright), paramedian vs midline etc. All the attendings that cover OB are doing it because they enjoy it.
ICU: Dr. Roccaforte and other anesthesia & Surgical attendings are the attendings when people rotate on TRACC/SICU. Team consists of 3 anesthesia senior residents 3-4 interns who are responsible for ~ 10 patients at Bellevue. A great majority of people enjoy the rotation but not the hours. As most people say the ICU is an extension of what is done by anesthesia in the OR and is great learning for lines, intubations & physiology. This is a closed unit with Anesthesia serving as the primary 'managers of the ICU' & we get all procedures, intubations etc. Call here is q3-4 with post day off.
Didactics are like all other programs hit or miss but improving with people that are interested in our education (M. Lee, Blitz, Cafferata, Espina, Gingrich, Morimoto, Jain, Yeh)gaining more control of what is taught. I still think its our responsibility to learn but this is a great way to get spoon fed if this is what youre looking for.
Atmosphere
Great comaraderie among peers, everyone looks out for the anesthesia team. We have several happy hours organized by residents(1-2/month), 1-2/year by department, golf outings, dinner clubs and other activities with residents. Attendings are very approachable and are a call away from answering questions regarding anything that may be on your mind. Like mentioned before 50-60 hrs per week means you have a life outside & can enjoy NYC.
Conclusion
Like previously mentioned I interviewed throughout and was hard pressed to find a stronger ICU, PAIN, Regional, good quality complex cases throughout your 3 years that will prepare for what ever lies ahead. Most people obtain their numbers 6 months into CA 2 year. Very few programs can boast about any of what I just mentioned while still maintaining hours in the 50-60 range. Only draw back is the lack of housing but its not NYU anesthesias fault its the NYC market; nonetheless you are more than adequately compensated for the lack of housing with higher than most salary. Additionally, once you obtain your NY license you can begin moonlighting internally. At this point I feel I will be ready to handle anything once I'm finished and would chose this program again over many others in the country. Last thing before concluding is that when I interviewed at NYU, people seemed genuinely happy to be here and this by far made the decision for me.
