NYU vs. CORNELL vs. MT. SINAI ???? Pros n Cons

[Rickybuuby]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey folks,
There must be a lot of confused souls like who needs some extra help or divine intervention in ranking the following programs. Could senior members or anybody with any sort of input write a few phrases here that would help a few of us find out which one of the below programs is right for us.

NYU (New York University medical center):::

This program had a bad rep earlier. People used to comment on the poor ancillary services and high volume of scut work. However, I was pleasantly suprised during my interview day when they said that the ancillaries and scut work are not an issue any more. ANY INPUT ON THIS???

Pros👍 :
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION (All three hospitals are right beside each other)
Competitive fellowships (cards and GI). Could somebody comment on how this program compares with Sinai and Cornell in this aspect????
Resident/housestaff comraderie is unparelleled. No second thoughts. These guys know how to have fun.
Autonomy.
Great program director.

Cons👎 :
Less teaching. Can somebody comment on this???
Tisch. Lot of privates. But it is only for 1 month a year. ALso, they are starting bed side rounds in Tisch.


CORNELL:::
This is a hard one to judge. It is an ivy league program and the name itself will carry you to some extent. But, I have some serious reservations about this program. Can somebody comment of how the comraderie in Cornell is. I got a feeling that most housestaff are pretty serious and keep to themselves. Surely, they help each other out but, they didn't seem like they were having fun along side.
Attending teaching (private or service) was a hit or miss. I was there twice for rounds. I must say that I wasn't impressed by the rounds both times. Attendings were more interested in getting their work done and getting the hell out of there. And so were the PGII and PG3s. Most of the official learning (I thought) occurred in conferences. Just like NYU.

Pros👍 : HOUSING, HOUSING, HOUSING.
Location is pretty decent too.
Great fellowships.
Name

Cons👎 :
I have serious reservations on how well the residents are trained clinically, as they looked as if they were taking orders from attendings and fellows.
Low on fun side. They were all there to work. And after work, they went back to their houses.

MT. SINAI:::
This program is a good balance between NYU and cornell. It had good teaching and was clinically better than cornell (at least). My only reservation with this program was the fact that you had to travel to Elmhurst and bronx for a couple of months a year. Also, (only for me) I wasn't a big fan of their morning report. They literally ran the list of an entire team in 1 hour. I am more of a fan of doing a case or two in depth.

Pros👍 : Great program director.
Strong fellowships.
Good comraderie
These guys have fun too.

Cons👎 : Travelling to triboros.
Sinai's reputation is very regional compared to NYU or cornell.


------------------------------------
Guys. I would appreciate any amount of input in this matter.
Thanks

 

[Rickybuuby]

Guys,
any help in this matter would be most appreciated. Please...

 

[Becket]

Recent graduate (last year) of NYU, so I'll throw in just a few thoughts-

Pro's: you're definitely right about the autonomy issue as far as Bellevue and also the VA are concerned (although you won't be spending as much time at the VA). Make no mistake, YOU are running the show as the resident. The attendings at Bellevue are, on the whole, a great bunch. They know their role, try not to interfere unless you go seriously astray in patient care, do some teaching, and act as your advocate in dealing with the inevitable BS that comes up (dispo issues, conflicts with other services, etc). Pathology is great (especially in ID and pulm), diverse patient population, etc.
-Bellevue ICU, beautiful new facility (opened summer 2004). Traditional academic ICU setup with one attending rounding with the team, pretty good teaching. Again, really fosters independence, especially as a 3rd year.
-program definitely was making strides in reducing scut at Bellevue as far as phlebotomy, IV's, etc
-teaching can be hit or miss, mostly good from my perspective; most of the case conferences are top notch and there's a lot of teaching (at least at Bellevue and VA) on a more informal basis with your attending, i.e. going over the previous days admits or any new developments with old patients. Honestly, we almost never did bedside rounding. If you're looking for a place where you go room to room as a team with your attending and then chew the fat for 20 minutes while you come up with a differential and plan, this isn't for you

Cons: for all of its positives, Bellevue still is a huge inner-city public hospital; facilities outside of ICU can be downright nasty. Things often are very inefficient (can be impossible to get an MRI or sometimes non-emergent CT's take days). Despite great pathology, there are a ton of admissions for things that are not too educational, especially if you've seen them 1001 times (for example, you WILL admit 2 EtOH withdrawals on every call, no exceptions)
-Tisch Hospital....ah, good old Tisch Hospital, could probably write several pages on this place. First the not so bad part. This is a tertiary care facility, you will see interesting cases here. Stuff is more efficient, don't need to beg to get imaging done or have consults see cases, social work is amazing, attendings handle most d/c paperwork. The downside: very private, too many attendings for each patient (I mean, if the patient doesn't have at least 4 consults, something's wrong) means more work for you calling attendings and chart rounding. Limited autonomy as junior and senior resident (plan on work rounds is always "sounds good...but better check with [insert attending name here] first"). Families here tend to be particularly nutty.
-Tisch ICU: this place almost defies description if you've never seen it. From a pure physical standpoint, it's a disgrace to modern medicine...patients piled on top of one another, zero room to sit and actually write a note, resident call room is a disgusting J-O-K-E. The unit is huge, there's no cap on the number of patients you'll be caring for (not unusual to have in the low 20's, sometimes they board people in the PACU downstairs). OK, for the not so bad part...hard to imagine you'll ever have to manage sicker patients than these (of course, probably 50% are beyond any hope of recovery...but you can still learn)...TONS of procedures if you want them...teaching is good when there's time for it. Sadly, learning experience can suffer from enormous patient load...also, there are 2 completely separate groups of intensivists who cover the unit, meaning on any given day, you'll probably be rounding with at least 4different attendings on just their patients...of course, while you're rounding with one attending, the others (not to mention the 500 other consultants) are wondering why stuff with their patients isn't being taken care of right that second. Just makes an already stressful situation more stressful.

Summary: all in all a great experience despite the negatives noted above (always easier to write about the bad stuff than the good)...in my more reflective moments, I still miss this place