Another PGY-2 spot is available now. We just filled one PGY-2 spot but another is available due to a current resident's medical reasons. You can check out our program
here and then contact our coordinator (Maggie Niles) at (504) 897-8948 and/or
[email protected].
Quick highlights of our program:
1) Minimum inpatient rehab: 12-13 months with great TBI, stroke, spinal cord experience
2) Great musculoskeletal experience
3) Four (4) months interventional pain: at 3 different locations
4) One of the few PM&R acgme-accredited pain fellowships
Contact me if you have any other questions.
The number of months of interventional pain, although clearly a plus, ought to be secondary, when you are looking at a program, to the quality of the teachers.
Everyone who practices Interventional can tell you there are guys in the community they would happily send their mom to, and there are folks they wouldn't let do procedures on their dog. So volume alone should not be your some criterion.
Fellowship training is only a reasonable measure if the staff is reasonably young, and even there, I know some guys who are fellowship trained I wouldn't let touch my patients
Asking patients in the community about their experience with individual docs is generally a worthless exercise, as the amnestic effect of the sedating agents makes their recollection unreliable.
There is a guy with a fellowship in Indiana (no, not algos) with a reputation for making his fellows read a wall full of books and articles before he lets them touch a patient. While clearly over the top, understanding WHY you do a particular procedure is at least as important as how to do them. You can do the perfect interlaminar epidural injection, but if the problem in the posterior column, the patient isn't going to get adequate relief no matter how proficient you are at doing interlaminars.
Knowing the complications others have had can help you avoid them yourself, and better understand why things like a test dose of lidocaine and DSA are important, even when they slow you down a little bit.
We were all anxious to start doing procedures, but the more you understand about about the anatomy, the radiography, and the pathophysiology, the better you will be.
If your four months are taught by a putz, a block jock, or someone who is just in it for the money, those are four months you could have better spent doing something more productive.
Quantity is important. Learning to do one procedure well is far more important than doing a bunch of procedures technically poorly, in an unsafe manner, or on an inappropriate patient.
