Chiming in from Philadelphia--
Jefferson is a heck of a program, by anyone’s standards, and only pales in comparison to the research powerhouse across the river (Penn). I am under the impression, though, that they have an even stronger MSK department, and are quite big in ultrasound. They have an outsized production of research though they don’t force it, and have a large (the largest?) contingent of residents presenting at RSNA every year. The residents are very chill and personable, and the interview dinner and breakfast were the best of my interview season. The hospital network is ever-expanding, and they’re going to out-bed the UPenn system in the Delaware Valley in the near future. Full disclosure-- I’ll be here next year, but I obviously can’t give much more feedback than what I’ve read about, heard about, or seen on the interview trail.
Einstein I’ll say more about, because as a non-‘academic’ program they get less discussion on SDN/AM. Frankly, it’s a tremendous program, and if you weren’t told, you would assume they had an associated medical school and university – they have residencies in at least six specialties, and have rotating med students in every rotation from (I think) Drexel, Temple, Cooper, and PCOM. The technology is great, the attendings are education-focused, they have the most rigorous and comprehensive curriculum for medical students I’ve ever seen, and it’s a hospital that sees (from a radiology perspective) basically everything except transplant or lots of peds. The reading room is interesting in that it’s one huge dark room broken into cubicles with the various subspecialties, allowing easy communication, rather than having various rooms with a handful of stations tucked all over the hospital. Morning and noon conferences take place in a technologically-well-appointed amphitheater owned by the radiology department. They have daily read-out in person with the ICU residents/attendings, which make the daily ICU portables a little less painful to look at. Noon-conference is absolutely protected-time, and residents are herded out of the reading room if read-out is dragging past 11:59. Also, they schedule a half-hour lunch break after noon conference, which is nice in and of itself, obviates the need to juggle your lunch around in your lap at conference, and means you won’t be contemplating a post-prandial nap during the last half of conference. Interview-wise, it’s notable in that you have six (six!) interviews with 8 different people, though it’s well coordinated. It should be mentioned that the program coordinator is probably the best that I’ve seen at any program, including radiology, medicine, and TY.
