I did a month away there, so I have less perspective but will give you my 2 cents about it.
How approachable are the faculty? Are they helpful and do they make teaching a priority, or is it a bother to them?
When I was there, most the faculty seemed very approachable. I say this because often I would approach them, introduce myself, and ask to scrub the case with them... frequently without a resident. I would say the best Teacher I have had as an attending in any case would be Dr. Heller, who is chief of Endocrine surgery at NYU. Our senior would frequently go into his cases and while Dr. Heller did most of the operating, and most of the teaching was directed towards the student, the resident experience was pretty good. It did vary, some attendings too full of themselves (and anyone who has done that rotation will know who I am referring to without naming names... One of my interviews the PD was an NYU alumni and told me stories about how this attending used to have his wife work as his secretary and they tried to trap residents into bad mouthing one to the other). I also spent a day at Bellvue and scrubed a whipple with Dr. Miller if I remember correctly, who was also incredibly nice and allowed the chief to do a good amount of the case which was a very difficult whipple (14 hours, ended up having to do a gastric-pancreatic anastomosis, intra-op consult to Vascular for possible portal vein reconstruction (not needed)). And the PD (Berman) was loved by the residents and has pretty much an open door policy.
Is the atmosphere such that residents (or students) are afraid to say the wrong thing because they might get their heads bitten off?
I didn't see any of this. From my experience, M&M usually is a place where residents need to tread lightly, be prepared to learn from mistakes and suffer some consequences, but here M&M was too benign for my taste actually. I would have preferred it to be a little more stern and a little more resident run. The residents would present the case and then the chair would present learning points, ask questions and move on if the residents got them wrong. I am used to residents doing learning points and having to answer for mistakes them make. Our team never really rounded with an attending (because we hardly ever had any inpatients on the melanoma, breast cancer, thyroid, parathyroid service), but in teaching sessions it seemed we felt pretty free to answer as we could without fear.
What kind of operative experience do the residents have? Is it top heavy or evenly distributed between different years? Do the fellows get in the way of operating on cases?
I can tell you what I saw and what the residents claimed. I saw the typical private hospital experience. It did vary greatly from attending to attending, from a PGY2 doing pretty much a complete mastectomy with the attending holding suction, to a PGY3 cutting sutures during a 0.5mm melanoma on the arm... The whipple I scrubbed the PGY5 and 3 started without the attending even there, the 5 did most of the Kocherizing, and most of the anastomoses, which i say was comperable with what I have become experienced with seeing the residents do in cases at UMDNJ Newark. The residents claim they were surprised the attending was even in for that much of the whipple, and that, at Bellvue, they operate like crazy. The cases seem to be pretty decently distributed, not top heavy like many of the other NYC programs. There was a fellow on my service (breast), and I never even met them. There were more than enough cases that more went uncovered than there was competition. I can't say more for the other services, but it seems Vascular (which is what my senior wanted to do) is a great resident experience there... CT might be a bit dicy from what I've heard.
What about the scut work that residents do because of the nursing unions that people talk about in NYC?
At Langone (private hospital) the nurses/ancillary staff seemed excellent and there was minimal scut to do. Bellvue is SCUT capital from what I have heard, but I can't comment on to what extent.
How are the resident didactics? Useful or just mindless powerpoint presentations that folks sleep through?
So there is a set up lecture once a week with protected time where there is quizes and what seems like useful presentations. M&M is also very informative, although not as resident driven as I would have liked. Dr. Berman is very proud of his didactics though, and the residents liked them, but I was told that it is still mainly read on your own for learning...
What is the attitude about resident hours?
They have to hand scan in and out, and I didn't see any scan and stay in. Our service was great hours, can't say much about other ones, but I know all 3 of our residents were well under 80 hours for my entire month there.
Do you mean like residents staying and not dropping out? Like coming back to work at NYU? I think attrition you can find stats on, but it seemed like they didn't lose anyone. Most the attendings also seemed to be NYU grads.
Hopefully this answered your questions and that some NYU med students can elaborate, contradict, or confirm my ramblings. I spent a month there and at this point will be ranking it within my top 3, Somewhere in the mix with UMDNJ-Newark and Cornell (still have to interview at NYU, Mt. Sinai and Columbia, but don't envision moving any of those top 3 for Sinai and Columbia)
