So let me tell you about Banner. So much is unknown because they just started.
Program Name: Banner OMFS
http://www.banneromfsresidency.com/
Program City: Phoenix, Glendale, Arizona
Length: 48mos (potential for back end MD,future integrated, chat with them if you want that)
Residents: 2 per year. 2010 is their first start year.
Program Director and Facts About Them: Dr. Buhrow - Presented himself as being in private practice his whole career and had the opportunity to pursue this career in academics and went for it.
Department Head and Facts: ''
Other Faculty and Facts: I don't remember their names, but as people, they are awesome. They are mostly young attendings. They are coming from Vandy, Christiana Care, and someplace in the midwest I think.
The names are Buhrow, Gillis, Sabol, and Surpure. Here is the PP
website.
Describe the city(ies): Per everyone there, Phoenix is a very livable city. Traffic isn't too bad and weather is great sans May-Aug. Glendale is about 30 min away from Banner and is up and coming. The VA is about 5-10 minutes from Banner. There will be a lot of dento alveolar and implants here. There is a great in house lab here. There will be some traveling: Mostly from Banner/VA to the midwestern dental school.
Describe the Program in One Sentence: Fantastic Potential with Great People. I believe it will be very sought after.
Describe the facilities (hospital, dental school, med school, etc.): Banner hospital is a great hospital, on the small size physically but it seemed busy. It's nice. The OMFS has no competition really and the GS department is working hand in hand with Dr. Buhrow to make his program move forward.
Midwestern is the dental shool. This is going to be great private practice experience apparently. The OMFS clinic is being built to order. I believe they are starting ortho also so you'll get that exposure eventually. That place is for profit so I would expect the implants and 3rds numbers to be high. The campus is very nice and lots of money has been spent to attract students to pay insane tuition. Dental, DO, Chiro maybe, nursing stuff, etc.
VA - Normal VA exposure. Nice facility. Nice people. They said the staff isn't the 'usual lazy gov't workers' so that promises to be a enjoyable time. A couple other GPR residents I think were there...
Med School - If the option goes through, it's via University of Arizona and will be MD, not DO via Midwestern. Based out of Phoenix, not the Tucson main campus.
Adding: The dental school and Banner pretty much has given the program carte blanche on anything they need to start up. This will include iCat, software, etc. I believe this will be one of the cutting edge forfront programs in the next 5 years.
Describe the opportunities in the following areas of OMFS:
Anesthesia - Unknown. It's expected to be normal 4mo. They will be providing opportunities for sedation experience. The dental school will provide opportunities as well.
Implants - Unknown, likely at midwestern and VA for the first few years due to lack of dedicated Banner clinic at the moment
TMJ - Dr Buhrow's thing...so should be adequate
Ablative Cancer - ENT rotation only
Cancer/Trauma Reconstruction - Trauma recon only
Facial Cosmetics - Not a goal at this time. There are some Phx OMFS though that do cosmetics only and I'd expect them to be a potential opportunity. I disagree. Since one of the attending's did a fellowship in cosmetics I believe this will play a big part into your training. These procedures are of course economy driven and our current state might lead to less exposure.
Orthognathics - All the attendings do this in their private practice and will likely capture most of the phx gnathic market due to cost. Actually a lot of local OMFS guys have already agreed to bring their cases through the program giving the residents exposure. One of them was at my interview.
Dentoalveolar - Should be good
Trauma - Felt like it was going to be strong and building. One of the few providers in the area and now that residents are there, it should build. Everything that goes to Banner (A level I trauma hospital) that is above the neck would be called to OMFS. Plastics and ENT were kicked out of the hospital a while ago because of their attitudes.
Craniofacial - Not a goal
Didactics - Normal conf, sedation lectures, path time, etc. The schedule in the book they gave us included taking classes during your first year such as: statistics, advanced anatomy, etc. I don't know how much time you would have to devote to these, but they are there.
Describe the call schedule: It was unknown but for a few years I imagine the attendings will still be involved with Primary and Secondary call while the service builds up.
Stipend: Wasn't given to us...but I would expect $45k or so and that'll go well for Phoenix.
Describe the rotations (gen surg, neuro, anesth, ENT, PRS, etc.)
This is unknown at this time. They had a schedule and it's normal stuff. Everything is approved and setup. I think the services will be hesitent at first to have 'the dentists' on board. The GS time is going to be awesome. The attending interviewed us and he was great. He looked at us as one of his own and promises it'll be a tough X months. They also have a ton of GS simulation stations. One of them is a Wii!! And they do alot of research because of it. During GS they will make you play the Wii for two days and they had a lot of simulative laproscopic doodads in the hospital which were fun to work with. Eventually they want to take this tech further with endoscopic/lapro techniques for facial surgery (TMJ, salivary, etc)
Could be some good research coming out of here in this regard.
Describe the Patient Base: Likey a lot of hispanic due to location. That's all I can guess... Normal patients....
Describe interaction between faculty and residents: Unknown, the attendings are genuinely good people. That was obvious. I expect statements like "we have journal club at faculty house, we going skiing, my kids know his kids" types of things.
How important do you feel the OMFS department is to the hospital? Do they contribute and are they respected?
ENT and plastics used to be at the hospital but wanted a huge amount of money to be there. Some other cases where they over plated a guy and over billed and the hospital kicked them out. They approached Dr. Buhrow and now OMFS is the only one called in to take call. Banner respects the department to this point.
What do most of the residents do after graduation? (Private practice, academics, hybrid, etc.)
With their planned scope and personalities, I would think they would chose applicants and personalities that will end up in private practice. But so much is unknown. If you want to be a traditional OMFS I would have no reservations in going here. If for some reason you think you want to be the next TMJ, Orthognathic, Trauma, etc guy the unknowns on their case load may steer you away.
Other notes: While they build up their department, applicants who have an intern year will have huge advantage. Their first 2, one is an intern, the other is just a great guy. See if they'll take an extern. The program will have growing pains no doubt and the attendings don't have alot of academic experience. But the heart is there, and they were great people and you can tell they have financial and emotional support from Banner. We met the Banner CEO, other department heads, etc and they were all happy to have the new department on board. It'll be awesome place.
So much is unknown but the goals of the department are clear. They want to be known as hard working departent that gets stuff done. They want honest, hard working residents, and I think humble applicants will be sucessful there.
Midwestern dental school is ridiculously nice. They have spent a lot of money on their facilities and it shows. They hadn't built the OS clinic yet but I am sure it is going to be first class. Perceived negatives would be a brand new program so there are a few worries with that although I think the potential to cut earlier would be there. There is no history of people taking and passing boards which is important to me. No definite history of the program in general. There is also no buffer between you and the attendings because there are no senior residents there which may be good or bad. Although I think Dr. Burrow is really nice so I think he will be a great and patient teacher. I lived in Arizona for a few years so a change of scenery was on my wishlist.
