OMFS and Internships

[Phineas_Gage]

Hey all. I’m wondering approximately what percentage of people who match into a 4 year omfs residency have done an internship year (or multiple). Like most others, I would rather match into a program without spending the additional year doing the internship, but it seems like it is becoming very common and maybe almost expected? If anyone has a good guess on the percent of people that match without interning that would be awesome. Thank you in advance.

 

[nade0016]

My PD experience is this:
4 year is slightly more competitive (due to the number of applicants) and therefore I see more applicants to my 4 year program with internships. It's a matter of numbers. For me, if it comes to ranking an applicant that has an internship versus a FOS applicant the internship applicant wins every-time. All things being equal, I am assuming the program will need to put in less effort to teach basic skills to a non-intern resident. Although I have been VERY wrong in the past with this assumption.

I would say this to anyone who does not want to put in the "extra year/time" for an externship. I would definitely not make that public knowledge. As a PD I want to know an applicant will do anything to obtain the position and if the prospect of an additional year is an issue then why apply at all and just go out and make money as a GP DDS immediately. Now, I certainly understand the desire to obtain a position and complete residency as quickly as possible, again, it dollars right?

I have heard that residents who have completes an intern year are better prepared to handle residency. I call BS on that one. Over the last 8 years of my academic career it is nearly impossible to tell who will be prepared and those who will struggle, regardless of the intern or 2 intern years. There are some really crappy internships out there that do not prepare you for time in a hospital. And I also think there are just crappy applicants as well. There I said it, some people who desire residency, for whatever reason, just are not a good fit. Unfortunately, there is not resource or data that looks at success rate of matching for each internship. Unless someone knows of a resource that I am not aware of.

My personal experience is this: I did an OMS internship at a VA Hospital that had zero trauma. But, I was prepared and ready to be in a hospital day 1 of my residency. I understood the nuance and inside workings of a hospital. How to page, how to be consulted, how to consult other services, how to write different type of hospital notes, how to round on in-patients, hierarchy of the OR, etc. The list goes on. Can these skills be taught early in residency, sure. Dr. Krishnan at Cincinnati has a "boot camp" for 1st years and interns prior to July 1st to get new residents up to speed. A wonderful idea that I have been trying to emulate but have had mixed success.

Bottom line, Dental school provides no preparation for residency whatsoever. Not even a little. So information/skills have to be learned individually and that is usually not something dental students are good at. They have been spoon fed information in PPT format for 4 years. So independent learning is not a skill that most applicants possess. Applicants who are self starters, self motivated and self learners will do well. Those who think residency is like dental school typically do not do well.

Hope this helps.

 

[nade0016]

Good question. I really can't discuss specifics of my programs rank list. Suffice to say, when I look back over the last few years it's a pretty even split between internships folks and FOS applicants. I would think most programs would look favorably on Internships, but definitely not all of them. There could also be some PD's who are hesitant to rank Intern applicants as they have some bad habits and those are tough to break.

 

[Bereno]

A few things come to mind

1) If someone did an internship, why didn't they match the first time? Red flag somewhere on the app? Nervous interviewer? Bad first impression? Low scores? Just plain bad luck? Hopefully an intern year was able to sort this out for them, but it would make me scrutinize their application a little more. Ceteris paribus, internships can help teach a lot of fundamentals.

2) Sh*it surgeons can come out of kickass programs just as easily as kickass surgeons can come out of sh*it programs.

3) My favorite part of Dr. Krishnan's bootcamp is the male foley station - the look on the new residents' faces are priceless every time they have to "firmly grasp".

 

[GimmeTheScalpel]

It’s pretty interesting that other surgical fields don’t feel the same way about those who do a surgery prelim year vs. the M4 who crushed all aspects of med school with a stellar ERAS application. There are definitely pros to doing an intern year but you just don’t see PD’s in other specialties jumping to rank a prelim #1.

 

[slowthai]

It’s pretty interesting that other surgical fields don’t feel the same way about those who do a surgery prelim year vs. the M4 who crushed all aspects of med school with a stellar ERAS application. There are definitely pros to doing an intern year but you just don’t see PD’s in other specialties jumping to rank a prelim #1.

Interestingly, they jump to rank them low or not at all. People doing prelims usually soaped, which is basically a red flag, because the question is, "Why did this applicant fail to match the first time around?" There's an excellent GS applicant (high step scores, research, etc) doing a prelim that sadly fell through the cracks and is struggling to receive IVs this year. To make things worse, applying as a graduate instead of as a senior is also a red flag.

 

[nade0016]

Interestingly, they jump to rank them low or not at all. People doing prelims usually soaped, which is basically a red flag, because the question is, "Why did this applicant fail to match the first time around?" There's an excellent GS applicant (high step scores, research, etc) that sadly fell through the cracks and is struggling to receive IVs this year. To make things worse, applying as a graduate instead of as a senior is also a red flag.

The person you speak about reminds me of a lot of applicants that struggle even though they have high scores/research/Letters. Its usually the interview/personality. I have found in my career that an odd personality can sink a candidate at the interview stage. They are usually great surgeons in the end but are always a bit strange.

 

[slowthai]

The person you speak about reminds me of a lot of applicants that struggle even though they have high scores/research/Letters. Its usually the interview/personality. I have found in my career that an odd personality can sink a candidate at the interview stage. They are usually great surgeons in the end but are always a bit strange.

Yeah, that's usually what it is. In this case, it appears to be otherwise. The person did multiple mock interviews with multiple members of the department and received good feedback. The person believes that if he/she had had an advocate, things would have gone differently. I think yield protection played a part too. It could be argued still that it was the interview, but the algorithm does account for that less than 1% of applicants that did everything right but still get screwed in the end.

 

[Banjogo]

Hijacking this thread for a bit- Are most of the non cat internships typically filled at this point in time? So far, i've applied to 26. 7 are filled, 1 responded that they'll review apps this week, and no word yet from the rest. Was I too late waiting until after match?

 

[nade0016]

Hijacking this thread for a bit- Are most of the non cat internships typically filled at this point in time? So far, i've applied to 26. 7 are filled, 1 responded that they'll review apps this week, and no word yet from the rest. Was I too late waiting until after match?

nope, keep your hopes up. But by now most programs have a person in mind.

 

[doktorinprogres]

nope, keep your hopes up. But by now most programs have a person in mind.

Does this mean applicants who are unsure of their chances should be applying to internships concurrently with PASS?