I liked my experience at Duke a couple years ago. I had sufficient volume to come out very comfortable with SCS, kypho, and all the standard injections. Faculty was largely solid (only one guy who I didn’t like but also was not malignant, just was pretentiously academic). The biggest knock against it (heavy IPS burden) has been almost fully eliminated. Overall a solid 7.5-8/10 program. SCS volume, while sufficient, was about 15. Would have loved 50+. There were no other advanced procedures (SI fusion, Minuteman, etc). No moonlighting opportunities.
Had a couple buddies from residency right down the road from me at Wake Forest. Very solid program. I don’t remember specifics but it always has had a great reputation. I think they lost their connection with Carolinas Pain Institute which did affect volume but still adequate. My 2 residency classmates who went there quit pain after a year and do general anesthesia, but I think that was a factor of them having malignant post-fellowship pain jobs in the setting of a booming anesthesia market, not because they weren’t capable of doing pain well.
Florida seemed awesome. They were #2 on my rank list. High volume interventional procedures. Doing some stuff I would probably never want to do as an attending even if I was well trained, but would be awesome to experience in the fellowship setting (endoscopic spine surgeries). Tons of SCS volume. Excellent anesthesia moonlighting.
UAB is probably variable. They had an attending for a few years that did probably 150-200 SCS per year. Then he left and they did essentially no SCS for a couple years. Last I heard, they were back to average volume. Injection numbers low/average.
