Pediatric Residency Survey (for fourth years and residents)

[Epaphroditus]

I'm a M3 at a medical school in the south gearing up to apply to pediatric residency. I emailed my classmates interested in pediatrics, and we came up with the following survey which we sent to our m4s and the residents at our pediatric hospital. By posting it here, I imagine more M3s around the nation will be helped out, and additionally, more pediatric programs discussed. Thanks!

(I think the most helpful questions are #6 and #8)

1.) What fourth year rotations do you recommend to prepare budding pediatricians for intern year?

2.) What residency programs, if any, did you regret applying to/interviewing at? Why?

3.) What residency programs seemed to have the happiest residents?

4.) What residency programs seemed to have the most miserable residents?

5.) What residency programs seemed to have a strong culture of learning?

6.) What were the top three things you were looking for in a residency program?

7.) How many interviews did you do? Do you wish you did more or less?

8.) What did your rank list look like? And what were the pros and cons of each program?

Residency Program 1:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 2:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 3:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 4:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 5:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 6:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 7:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 8:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 9:
Pros:
Cons:

Residency Program 10:
Pros:
Cons:

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[TGAmed]

1.) What fourth year rotations do you recommend to prepare budding pediatricians for intern year? Wards, PICU, a real AI (my med school has some lighter rotations that get counted as AIs but shouldn't)

2.) What residency programs, if any, did you regret applying to/interviewing at? Why? None, even the one I didn't rank gave me confidence that I really would get the heebie-geebies (sp?) if something was amiss.

3.) What residency programs seemed to have the happiest residents? Notable happiness at Yale, Levine, UNC, St. Louis. That being said, pretty much everywhere I went the resident's were happy. Its peds...

4.) What residency programs seemed to have the most miserable residents? I will avoid naming programs negatively. But if you pay close attention to the undertone in the resident's statements I think you can tell which places violate duty hours.

5.) What residency programs seemed to have a strong culture of learning? Notable educational focus at UVa, Yale, St. Louis, Cincinnati.

6.) What were the top three things you were looking for in a residency program? Resident's feel that the faculty listen to them, resident happiness, large program, family centered rounds, efficient rounding, functional EMR, patient ownership, attendence at morning report, etc. Sorry, that's more than 3...

7.) How many interviews did you do? Do you wish you did more or less? Did 11, could have done less in retrospect but I'm glad I did them all.

8.) What did your rank list look like? Had 10 programs on my list. Only one place I was more willing to scramble than go to...and that was a close call because the scramble really sucks. My top 2 were both huge programs, free standing, effective family centered rounds, great teaching, fellowship opportunities, good board pass rates. My 3rd choice was hospital within a hospital, medium size program, not great at family centered rounds, but fantastic EMR, opportunity to do PICU 1st year, and awesome comaraderie.

General Comments:
I thought that the resident enthusiasm about their program director said a lot about resident satisfaction with the program.

I was wary of programs that did not trial new duty hour changes prior to July 1st. Next season I would be wary of programs that did not go through revisions based on resident feedback.

Major downsides for me were travel (ie: having to drive an hour each way 4 months out of 1st year to cover another university's hospital or other outside facility...), being told by an interviewer that he did not have time to read my file, uninvolved PDs, lack of EMR (lets face it....I'm really spoiled by computer vital gathering in the morning and I cannot go back...)