Pikeville 91% First choice residency?

[Instatewaiter]

A simple irony is that in the future you apply to your "specialty" of choice after you do a IM residency internship and a "joe shmo" from a community hospital IM program gets the fellowship in derm, Rad, ect. over you simply because they are better residents and one of their attendings graduated from that program. If you go through medical school with the notion that you know more than you do then I can assure you that you will NOT get your residency of choice and fall into that margin of people who did not match to their number one residency because they were arrogant. Being impressive is a relative description. If you don't think PCSOM match list is impressive then so be it. I don't care, and nobody else cares. The fact that 91% of our students got first choice (if a valid stat) is great. But unless you are a resident, or expert on residencies then your opinion is of little value to those reading these posts.

Fellowship in radiology after IM? Interesting.

Where you do residency matters, a lot. You apply to fellowship at the very beginning of your 2nd year. Intern year does not give you enough time to do research or other extras so your fellowship app is the same as your residency app with the added bit of where you go to residency. Coming from a crappy community program doesn't leave you options.

Community programs do not place very many people into fellowships. The better the residency (and academic residencies) the better the ability to get into a fellowship. Coming from a community program doesn't give you many options.

The PCSOM match list is mediocre. They shot low to programs others didn't want. Not surprising 91% got their "first choice." Any school can get a 91% match rate if they scare the crap out of their students and have them apply to programs well below their pay grade. That is why the match rate needs to also take into account which programs they matched into.

A school could have a 50% match rate and match everyone into Penn, Hopkins, MGH, UCSF, and columbia and that would be alot more impressive than 91% match rate to all community programs.

Wow You don't have the first clue about PCSOM. You also seem to have no clue about residency. Saying that community hospital IM programs are not as superior is just completely wrong. You fail to consider the history of residencies and location of residencies among the huge plethora of factors going into residency match. When you state that PCSOM shoots low. I don't agree with this at all. I have the choice to do whatever I want and so do my classmates. Is there a vibe that we are forced to go into primary care? Heck no. Our school focus is on RURAL HEALTH! don't you think rural areas need radiologists? oncologists? ENTs? That's why our students nab some pretty good residencies. In looking at one match list that isn't even official you determine that it's not impressive. That's your opinion but it's misguided. Maybe schools like Mt. Sinai have people who think they all can get into top "notch residencies" but fail to realize that the MCAT means nothing and we are all on the same playing field. There have been people I've talked to that got 21's on the MCAT, worked their butts off in school and got ortho surgery residencies. Then there's the guy who gets a 21 on the MCAT that wants to go into IM at some hospital in WV. Both got what they wanted and therefore life is good.

Yeah, community IM programs are generally not as good as academic programs. They tend not to see the difficult cases because those go to the tertiary care centers (the academic centers). They don't have the same kind of specialties, resources, or quality of attendings. You don't get the same level of training at community programs.

Again, if your top 4 are Hopkins, Harvard, UCSF and Penn and you end up with your 4th choice,would you say that will be better or worse training than matching your first choice at some crappy community program with a 200 bed hospital?

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[RELAX11]

Speculate much that pcsom purposely undershoots? Your whole argument is based on your opinion that pcsom students purposely don't try for good residencies which is completely false. Many of the hospitals are highly ranked and outnumbering the community hospitals. I don't think people are arguing that pcsom is anywhere near the quality of the elite universities so stop stretching the argument. I would say the argument is that pcsom is a respectable medical school that can get one where they want to go. You are making this into something it is not. Yes you are right that schools with lower % first match could very well be because of more competitive residency choices. Never argued against that. What I am saying is at the 91% is a positive rather than a negative and that another school with a lower % should not be given any weight unless all the first choice residencies are known.

Fellowship in radiology after IM? Interesting.

Where you do residency matters, a lot. You apply to fellowship at the very beginning of your 2nd year. Intern year does not give you enough time to do research or other extras so your fellowship app is the same as your residency app with the added bit of where you go to residency. Coming from a crappy community program doesn't leave you options.

Community programs do not place very many people into fellowships. The better the residency (and academic residencies) the better the ability to get into a fellowship. Coming from a community program doesn't give you many options.

The PCSOM match list is mediocre. They shot low to programs others didn't want. Not surprising 91% got their "first choice." Any school can get a 91% match rate if they scare the crap out of their students and have them apply to programs well below their pay grade. That is why the match rate needs to also take into account which programs they matched into.

A school could have a 50% match rate and match everyone into Penn, Hopkins, MGH, UCSF, and columbia and that would be alot more impressive than 91% match rate to all community programs.



Yeah, community IM programs are generally not as good as academic programs. They tend not to see the difficult cases because those go to the tertiary care centers (the academic centers). They don't have the same kind of specialties, resources, or quality of attendings. You don't get the same level of training at community programs.

Again, if your top 4 are Hopkins, Harvard, UCSF and Penn and you end up with your 4th choice,would you say that will be better or worse training than matching your first choice at some crappy community program with a 200 bed hospital?

 

[J1515]

Speculate much that pcsom purposely undershoots? Your whole argument is based on your opinion that pcsom students purposely don't try for good residencies which is completely false. Many of the hospitals are highly ranked and outnumbering the community hospitals. I don't think people are arguing that pcsom is anywhere near the quality of the elite universities so stop stretching the argument. I would say the argument is that pcsom is a respectable medical school that can get one where they want to go. You are making this into something it is not. Yes you are right that schools with lower % first match could very well be because of more competitive residency choices. Never argued against that. What I am saying is at the 91% is a positive rather than a negative and that another school with a lower % should not be given any weight unless all the first choice residencies are known.

You're wasting your breath on people who are obsessed with prestige. They don't understand that what is best or impressive to them is not necessarily best to someone else. It's difficult for a person who is obsessed with getting into a top 10/20 med school or residency to understand the motivations for someone who wants to train at a non-top 20 program where they're happy, even if it's a community hospital in a rural town w/ population 400 (ie: there's no way that 91% of the class really wanted to practice in those locations, they must've been forced into it). Similarly it's difficult for pre-meds to understand how anyone could possibly choose a DO school over an MD school if given the choice. Usually this concept begins to make a little more sense to people when they hit ~30 years of age and have spent some time in the real world... but others just never get it and continue to believe the rest of the world thinks just like they do: everyone wishes they could be a doctor, everyone wishes they could train at Harvard, etc...

 

[Instatewaiter]

You're wasting your breath on people who are obsessed with prestige. They don't understand that what is best or impressive to them is not necessarily best to someone else. It's difficult for a person who is obsessed with getting into a top 10/20 med school or residency to understand the motivations for someone who wants to train at a non-top 20 program where they're happy, even if it's a community hospital in a rural town w/ population 400 (ie: there's no way that 91% of the class really wanted to practice in those locations, they must've been forced into it). Similarly it's difficult for pre-meds to understand how anyone could possibly choose a DO school over an MD school if given the choice. Usually this concept begins to make a little more sense to people when they hit ~30 years of age and have spent some time in the real world... but others just never get it and continue to believe the rest of the world thinks just like they do: everyone wishes they could be a doctor, everyone wishes they could train at Harvard, etc...

There is a difference between quality and prestige. You say I am interested in prestige. I am interested in quality of training. Those places with a lot of prestige got like that for a reason, they have high quality training.

 

[FutureCTDoc]

There is a difference between quality and prestige. You say I am interested in prestige. I am interested in quality of training. Those places with a lot of prestige got like that for a reason, they have high quality training.

I agree, I really would love to do ophtho at Bascom Palmer which is very prestigious. It is prestigious because it has routinely turned out the best in the country and has a proven track record. This isn't being pretentious, this is wanting to be the best physician I can be.

 

[RELAX11]

There is a difference between quality and prestige. You say I am interested in prestige. I am interested in quality of training. Those places with a lot of prestige got like that for a reason, they have high quality training.

Yes and many if not most of the matches at pcsom are at QUALITY hospitals. Just look some up and stop spouting misinformation, you are embarrassing yourself.

 

[J1515]

There is a difference between quality and prestige. You say I am interested in prestige. I am interested in quality of training. Those places with a lot of prestige got like that for a reason, they have high quality training.

Poor assumption. Residency rankings are based on NIH funding, not quality of training. I could name one of these big name places that I rotated at where the residents were malignant towards each other and there definitely wasn't high quality training, yet it had a popular name that people would cream their pants over. Doesn't mean that's universal, but prestige does not = high quality training in all cases.

I agree, I really would love to do ophtho at Bascom Palmer which is very prestigious.

Shouldn't you be worrying about finishing undergrad first before you worry about where you think you want to do residency?

 

[christina30]

Poor assumption. Residency rankings are based on NIH funding, not quality of training. I could name one of these big name places that I rotated at where the residents were malignant towards each other and there definitely wasn't high quality training, yet it had a popular name that people would cream their pants over. Doesn't mean that's universal, but prestige does not = high quality training in all cases.



Shouldn't you be worrying about finishing undergrad first before you worry about where you think you want to do residency?

They also don't understand that a high US News ranking for a medical school does NOT = better medical education. You're talking to the wrong crowd - the whole reason they're judging a place like PCSOM is because it's not Harvard or some other big name school. A DO school with such low average MCAT/GPA couldn't possibly turn out a better physician than Harvard/Hopkins/Penn!!!!!

 

[RELAX11]

They also don't understand that a high US News ranking for a medical school does NOT = better medical education. You're talking to the wrong crowd - the whole reason they're judging a place like PCSOM is because it's not Harvard or some other big name school. A DO school with such low average MCAT/GPA couldn't possibly turn out a better physician than Harvard/Hopkins/Penn!!!!!

This is right on. I think the disrespect for pcsom is solely from the old admission numbers which are low compared to others. Everywhere I search tho I find admission numbers from 5 years ago as the most up to date. I read on other threads that the mcat increased 4 to 5 points on average. It also said that since they want a good percentage of their students to stay in the area that they would rather choose someone from the area with lower admission numbers than someone from a big city who will most likely return to practice in a more populated area. Just looking at aacomas pcsom received over 2 thousand applications and granted less than 150 interviews for some 80 seats. This means that pcsom surely has a large enough applicant pool to have superficially high admission stats. Also close to 55% of all usa applicants to all med schools dont even get in anywhere. So you draw the conclusion. In the end tho undergrad mcat and gpa are meaningless once you are in med school.

 

[J1515]

They also don't understand that a high US News ranking for a medical school does NOT = better medical education. You're talking to the wrong crowd - the whole reason they're judging a place like PCSOM is because it's not Harvard or some other big name school. A DO school with such low average MCAT/GPA couldn't possibly turn out a better physician than Harvard/Hopkins/Penn!!!!!

Well in their defense, I don't recall seeing anyone specifically say one school will produce a "better" physician than the other. Then again, when you think the training at one program is "better" than another, I suppose you're basically saying that one will become a "better" physician. If you ask current senior residents to rank their residency program and training experience from 1-10, I'm willing to bet you would see scattered scores across the board with some programs receiving good scores and others receiving not so good... all of this regardless of where they rank on the US news ranking.

Again, everyone has different priorities when choosing their life's path. The people who think a top-10 residency is the be all end all will never understand the people who don't care about rankings and are happy where they are, and vice versa.

 

[christina30]

Well in their defense, I don't recall seeing anyone specifically say one school will produce a "better" physician than the other. Then again, when you think the training at one program is "better" than another, I suppose you're basically saying that one will become a "better" physician. The word "better" is a subjective term that pre-meds and gunners toss around. It's meaningless though and completely nondescriptive. Look at the average patient seeking healthcare today. They're looking for a doctor who will be nice to them and spend time talking to them. It doesn't matter that the doc is coming up with a huge differential in their head and ruling out hundreds of potential illnesses. The patient doesn't see that. The typical patient will think the doctor who is nicest is the "better" physician. It's a disgusting indication of how politically correct our society has come, but it's reality. In a medical student's eyes, the "better" doctor might be the one who is brilliant and can recite every NEJM study since 1960. Or maybe they think the "better" doctor is the FP guy who knows a little about everything but spends hours each day teaching. To enter a residency or medical school blindly (or with little knowledge about it) thinking that it's "better" than all the others just because you recognize the name is foolish in my eyes.

I blame it on House.

Pre-meds love to use House as their idea of an ideal physician. As in: "would you rather have a smart doctor who was a dick like House, or a nice, incompetent doctor?!"

The reality is: Not only would House probably have lost his license to practice in the real world, but patients wouldn't want to be treated by him. End of story. Medicine is a service industry, and people don't want to be treated like **** by some guy with a doctoral degree.

The idea that niceness and competency must be mutually exclusive is frustrating as all hell.

 

[drizzt3117]

I agree, I really would love to do ophtho at Bascom Palmer which is very prestigious. It is prestigious because it has routinely turned out the best in the country and has a proven track record. This isn't being pretentious, this is wanting to be the best physician I can be.

has B-P ever taken a DO grad?

 

[FutureCTDoc]

has B-P ever taken a DO grad?

No idea, it's my dream residency, if not there's an allo program where my father was a professor and another one where my uncle is department chair, so I figure if not Bascom I have two really good backups.

 

[scdocusc]

.

 

[Instatewaiter]

Yes and many if not most of the matches at pcsom are at QUALITY hospitals. Just look some up and stop spouting misinformation, you are embarrassing yourself.

Very few of the matches are really to quality hospitals. Look at IM. There is like 2-3 decent programs in that list. The match list, at best is mediocre.

This is why there is a 91% match rate. The students shot for non-competitive programs.

Poor assumption. Residency rankings are based on NIH funding, not quality of training. I could name one of these big name places that I rotated at where the residents were malignant towards each other and there definitely wasn't high quality training, yet it had a popular name that people would cream their pants over. Doesn't mean that's universal, but prestige does not = high quality training in all cases.

Again, has nothing to do with "rankings" by US news or otherwise. It has to do with the quality of training.

There is a difference in the training you get at certain programs. The good programs have become the good programs because they are known to produce clinically the strongest residents. They also attract the clinically strongest students. That is why you need all honors and high board scores to even get offered an interview at these programs. Sure they also do a lot of research but those top programs do it all.

If the academic programs weren't the best, why do community hospitals send the tough cases there?

when some of you actually do reach med school, you'll quickly realize that prestige does not = quality. As it stands, the match list is of very little value anyway when evaluating a school. Outwardly you might say that a match list is loaded with peds, FM, or IM and therefore poor. However, I've known more than 10 top students who scored very high on COMLEX that entered these programs because they wanted that residency in that area. The whole idea that non-university IM residencies are less quality is completely false. To say that IM attendings at these programs are of lesser quality is not true either. Each program out there is different and has strengths and weaknesses. 90% of your post grad education is how hard you work. If you expect to coast into a "highly touted" residency and automatically be a better doc than someone at a less highly touted program then you are way out in left field. Either way, you're a doctor so be happy you're even here to begin with.

And you'll see if you actually interview at the really exceptional programs that there is a big difference in what a good program can offer you in terms of clinical exposure, cutting edge treatments and what the residents can do at different levels. At the lower tier programs I interviewed at, the 2nd year residents were no where near the level of those top programs. The better the program, the better the residents- and they were ready to lead teams much earlier.

Having tons of IM, FM, Peds does not make a poor match list. A match list can be exceptional even if all the matches are IM, FM and Peds. However, if people are only matching to a few university programs and the rest are 200 bed community hospitals full of FMGs then that does make a poor match list.

On average, community programs are most definitely worse than academic centers. If you could just work hard and get the training you need you wouldn't need a residency. It is about the people you are surrounded by. At academic centers, the quality of residents and attendings it much higher than out in the community. The care at the community centers is in no way equivalent to the academic centers. The academic programs attract the best attendings and attract the difficult cases.

If you ever see some of the crap that gets sent from the community programs you would laugh.

 

[RELAX11]

First off you don't even know the difference between community and registered hospitals, they are not based on number of beds. Please inform me of how you define the difference because I will notify the AHA and tell them.

Very few of the matches are really to quality hospitals. Look at IM. There is like 2-3 decent programs in that list. The match list, at best is mediocre.

This is why there is a 91% match rate. The students shot for non-competitive programs.




Again, has nothing to do with "rankings" by US news or otherwise. It has to do with the quality of training.

There is a difference in the training you get at certain programs. The good programs have become the good programs because they are known to produce clinically the strongest residents. They also attract the clinically strongest students. That is why you need all honors and high board scores to even get offered an interview at these programs. Sure they also do a lot of research but those top programs do it all.

If the academic programs weren't the best, why do community hospitals send the tough cases there?



And you'll see if you actually interview at the really exceptional programs that there is a big difference in what a good program can offer you in terms of clinical exposure, cutting edge treatments and what the residents can do at different levels. At the lower tier programs I interviewed at, the 2nd year residents were no where near the level of those top programs. The better the program, the better the residents- and they were ready to lead teams much earlier.

Having tons of IM, FM, Peds does not make a poor match list. A match list can be exceptional even if all the matches are IM, FM and Peds. However, if people are only matching to a few university programs and the rest are 200 bed community hospitals full of FMGs then that does make a poor match list.

On average, community programs are most definitely worse than academic centers. If you could just work hard and get the training you need you wouldn't need a residency. It is about the people you are surrounded by. At academic centers, the quality of residents and attendings it much higher than out in the community. The care at the community centers is in no way equivalent to the academic centers. The academic programs attract the best attendings and attract the difficult cases.

If you ever see some of the crap that gets sent from the community programs you would laugh.

You obviously didn't look at all the hospitals. You cherry picked the "worst" available. I know your definition of a quality hospital is top 50 ranked by US NEWS lol. You just repeated what has already been answered, how ridiculous. I think if i just keep repeating what i believe than that means it will become true....right by your logic? And you assume community hospitals are all the same. Your naivety is getting humorous now. You still fail to realize that rural hospitals are both community and registered hospitals and that both are NECESSITIES to treat HUMAN BEINGS. Mature people dont say "oh that hospital is a community hospital, i dont want to practice there" and completely screw over that population of patients. Ask yourself why you chose medicine again. Sure the quality may not be the same between some community and registered hospitals but so is the same between some registered and registered and some community and community.

You have a strange bias against community hospitals which reminds me of the argument republicans used against Obama saying he was a "community organizer/leader" as if it was a bad thing and laughed at it. What does community remind you of community college or something, I just don't get it?

There are over 10,000 hospitals in the US. Stop pretending like you know the quality of each and every one of these just because US news or some other ranking system you worship says a hospital ranked or not. Even if you do want to go by rankings out of the only 50 matches at pcsom and smaller number of hospitals, I found most of the hospitals I looked up ranked in national top 100 lists. Check out Dayton, Columbus, pikeville medical center for example. So worshiping rank lists, multiple top 100 hospitals out of 10,000 hospitals, I am sorry but you better get treatment for that burn, but don't go to a community hospital you might get an infection.

 

[J1515]

Again, has nothing to do with "rankings" by US news or otherwise. It has to do with the quality of training.

There is a difference in the training you get at certain programs. The good programs have become the good programs because they are known to produce clinically the strongest residents. They also attract the clinically strongest students. That is why you need all honors and high board scores to even get offered an interview at these programs. Sure they also do a lot of research but those top programs do it all.

The name of a program doesn't train the resident. Doctors come and go, chief residents come and go. I promise you a resident coming out of a 400 bed hospital not affiliated with a medical school has the same potential to become just as knowledgeable as a resident coming out of any of your beloved top-tier hospitals affiliated with a medical school. It's up to the individual.

If the academic programs weren't the best, why do community hospitals send the tough cases there?

There you go again using the word "best." I think my residency is the best because I have autonomy, I'm learning a $h itload of crap, the attendings are all approachable and teach, awesome residents and chiefs, good call schedule/coverage, and I have exposure to a wide range of pathology. So why would I be better off at Hopkins or any of your precious top tier places (some of which I have rotated through)? Job opportunities? Maybe if I wanted to teach or do research at Hopkins or Harvard. Pay as an attending there? No, academic medicine traditionally pays less. Fellowships? No thanks, my hospital takes plenty of in-house and also has great placement in other programs. Prestige? Ahhhh yes, there we have it.

What constitutes "tough cases?" Transplants? There are academic programs that don't do transplant surgery. A patient with suspected Dengue fever? I actually saw that at one of the hospitals I rotated through during 3rd year in a not so nice neighborhood. It was not affiliated with a medical school and the ID dept did a fine job. A fellow third year student had a patient with liver cysts/entamoeba histolytica at the same hospital later on that year that wasn't referred out. If you want to argue that an FP resident at an 80 bed hospital in rural Iowa won't see rare diseases or ever get to see a liver transplant I'll buy that. If they want to practice rural medicine then good for them. But don't try to tell me that someone who is at a 400 bed hospital in a fairly well populated city will automatically receive inferior training because it isn't named Harvard or Hopkins. That's BS. This isn't high school. We don't learn by sitting in a classroom. 90% of learning during residency is self-learning. Yeah there's rounds and pimping and didactics, but it's when you go home and read that you learn. Even if your patient doesn't have Yellow fever... if it's on your differential you read up on it and learn. Simply being at Harvard wouldn't jam it into your head.

 

[TexasPhysician]

I blame it on House.

Pre-meds love to use House as their idea of an ideal physician. As in: "would you rather have a smart doctor who was a dick like House, or a nice, incompetent doctor?!"

The reality is: Not only would House probably have lost his license to practice in the real world, but patients wouldn't want to be treated by him. End of story. Medicine is a service industry, and people don't want to be treated like **** by some guy with a doctoral degree.

The idea that niceness and competency must be mutually exclusive is frustrating as all hell.

You would be surprised how hard it is to lose your license. It is difficult to get your license, but very hard to lose it.

 

[scdocusc]

Very few of the matches are really to quality hospitals. Look at IM. There is like 2-3 decent programs in that list. The match list, at best is mediocre.

This is why there is a 91% match rate. The students shot for non-competitive programs.




Again, has nothing to do with "rankings" by US news or otherwise. It has to do with the quality of training.

There is a difference in the training you get at certain programs. The good programs have become the good programs because they are known to produce clinically the strongest residents. They also attract the clinically strongest students. That is why you need all honors and high board scores to even get offered an interview at these programs. Sure they also do a lot of research but those top programs do it all.

If the academic programs weren't the best, why do community hospitals send the tough cases there?


And you'll see if you actually interview at the really exceptional programs that there is a big difference in what a good program can offer you in terms of clinical exposure, cutting edge treatments and what the residents can do at different levels. At the lower tier programs I interviewed at, the 2nd year residents were no where near the level of those top programs. The better the program, the better the residents- and they were ready to lead teams much earlier.

Having tons of IM, FM, Peds does not make a poor match list. A match list can be exceptional even if all the matches are IM, FM and Peds. However, if people are only matching to a few university programs and the rest are 200 bed community hospitals full of FMGs then that does make a poor match list.

On average, community programs are most definitely worse than academic centers. If you could just work hard and get the training you need you wouldn't need a residency. It is about the people you are surrounded by. At academic centers, the quality of residents and attendings it much higher than out in the community. The care at the community centers is in no way equivalent to the academic centers. The academic programs attract the best attendings and attract the difficult cases.

If you ever see some of the crap that gets sent from the community programs you would laugh.

This is just a basic fundamental difference between your opinion and mine. I come from the school of thought that if you are one resident in the line of 6 others to put in a tube then you get short changed in your residency. Does that make you a better doc? no. If you are one on one with an attending and you get to put the tube in or central line instead of the surgical resident then you've just learned something more than a resident at a large institution. Also, there are quite a few hospitals on the PCSOM match list that are very large but not associated with academic institutions. Yes community hospital residencies have disadvantages but they have some very good advantages if you want to be a clinician and not a teacher. The notion that community hospitals don't see as much pathology is total junk because you see it first and sometimes, like in the case of eastern KY and western VA, you see some weird pathology quite often (like the 9 cardiac myxomas studied at PMC in pikeville in the past 4 years). However, I think this point is moot for PCSOM anyway because the past two or three classes from PCSOM have had some stellar matches in them.

 

[Instatewaiter]

I come from the school of thought that if you are one resident in the line of 6 others to put in a tube then you get short changed in your residency. Does that make you a better doc? no. If you are one on one with an attending and you get to put the tube in or central line instead of the surgical resident then you've just learned something more than a resident at a large institution. Also, there are quite a few hospitals on the PCSOM match list that are very large but not associated with academic institutions. Yes community hospital residencies have disadvantages but they have some very good advantages if you want to be a clinician and not a teacher.

Since you have never been to one of these big name programs you try and vilify with broad generalities (that are wrong) how would you know? You don't.

The "big name" places that you try and vilify actually have more procedures done because they also have a higher volume than the less well known places (and especially the community programs) and the interns do the procedures on their own patients. All the interns were signed off on the ACGME required procedures (in IM- central lines, LPs, Taps etc) while the lower tier ones did not. So actually it is just the opposite.

blah,blah,blah

You have a strange bias against community hospitals which reminds me of the argument republicans used against Obama saying he was a "community organizer/leader" as if it was a bad thing and laughed at it. What does community remind you of community college or something, I just don't get it?

Community programs do not have the resources, technology, specialists or cutting edge procedures that the academic centers do. That means you will never get trained with this stuff... your education suffers.

Add to that the population they see. They see the run of the mill stuff. The easy stuff you can get anywhere. They cannot handle the difficult stuff. That is why they send it to an academic center. You will see that if you ever train at an academic hospital.

There are over 10,000 hospitals in the US. Stop pretending like you know the quality of each and every one of these just because US news or some other ranking system you worship says a hospital ranked or not. Even if you do want to go by rankings out of the only 50 matches at pcsom and smaller number of hospitals, I found most of the hospitals I looked up ranked in national top 100 lists. Check out Dayton, Columbus, pikeville medical center for example. So worshiping rank lists, multiple top 100 hospitals out of 10,000 hospitals, I am sorry but you better get treatment for that burn, but don't go to a community hospital you might get an infection.

It is not about rankings. It is about quality and what the place can offer for training.

Let's look at Pikeville... 261 beds. Wow. Most medical centers have that many medicine beds. 8 MICU beds. That's gonna train you great with a whole 8 patients in the unit. And no CCU- because they send that stuff to an academic center.

No GI, no endocrine, no ENT, no urology dept, severely limited Cards services (literally no cards interventions so no cath, no EP) and the list goes on. This is a great example of a small, community hospital. Overall, not the place you want to train.

Once you get to med school, come back on here and tell us some of the great care patients get at "outside hospital" (unless you don't train at an academic center- then you won't realize it). You'll see it is often crappy care.

 

[RELAX11]

Ok now rankings don't matter, I thought you would ignore pikeville medical center's ranking.

You act like students are not able to practice where they want! People go to the pcsom and actually fulfill the mission and practice in rural areas, including pikeville. That is why the school was created. Ie you could CHOOSE between staying in a rural area or going to an ACADEMIC HOSPITAL, just take a look at the match lists. Again no one is arguing pcsom is harvard, but rather a solid school where you can attain your goals and CHOOSE whether you want to fulfill pcsoms mission or not.

Your ignorance speaks for itself.


You didn't address my issues from the my last post either. Your view of the state of the united states and for that matter the world is sadly mistaken. Of course you are are going to say you disagree it is the natural thing to do.

Since you have never been to one of these big name programs you try and vilify with broad generalities (that are wrong) how would you know? You don't.

The "big name" places that you try and vilify actually have more procedures done because they also have a higher volume than the less well known places (and especially the community programs) and the interns do the procedures on their own patients. All the interns were signed off on the ACGME required procedures (in IM- central lines, LPs, Taps etc) while the lower tier ones did not. So actually it is just the opposite.




Community programs do not have the resources, technology, specialists or cutting edge procedures that the academic centers do. That means you will never get trained with this stuff... your education suffers.

Add to that the population they see. They see the run of the mill stuff. The easy stuff you can get anywhere. They cannot handle the difficult stuff. That is why they send it to an academic center. You will see that if you ever train at an academic hospital.




It is not about rankings. It is about quality and what the place can offer for training.

Let's look at Pikeville... 261 beds. Wow. Most medical centers have that many medicine beds. 8 MICU beds. That's gonna train you great with a whole 8 patients in the unit. And no CCU- because they send that stuff to an academic center.

No GI, no endocrine, no ENT, no urology dept, severely limited Cards services (literally no cards interventions so no cath, no EP) and the list goes on. This is a great example of a small, community hospital. Overall, not the place you want to train.

Once you get to med school, come back on here and tell us some of the great care patients get at "outside hospital" (unless you don't train at an academic center- then you won't realize it). You'll see it is often crappy care.

 

[Instatewaiter]

Ok now rankings don't matter, I thought you would ignore pikeville medical center's ranking.

You act like students are not able to practice where they want! People go to the pcsom and actually fulfill the mission and practice in rural areas, including pikeville. That is why the school was created. Ie you could CHOOSE between staying in a rural area or going to an ACADEMIC HOSPITAL, just take a look at the match lists. Again no one is arguing pcsom is harvard, but rather a solid school where you can attain your goals and CHOOSE whether you want to fulfill pcsoms mission or not.

Your ignorance speaks for itself.


You didn't address my issues from the my last post either. Your view of the state of the united states and for that matter the world is sadly mistaken. Of course you are are going to say you disagree it is the natural thing to do.

Re-read all of my posts. It has never been about rankings. The US news rankings are crap anyway. What it is about is the quality of training. This includes: volume of patients, difficulty of patients, seeing things you would not otherwise see, quality of attendings, quality of therapies your hospital can offer, exposure to specialites, autonomy and quality of residents that surround you. Like it or not, community hospitals are vastly inferior in each of these aspects. If you want the best training you can get, go to an academic center. If you just want mediocre training, fine- you can work at a crappy rural community program. If you want to work in a rural area, why not get the best training you can and then go back to the rural area to practice? Plus there are academic centers in rural areas: in Virginia, UVA definitely comes to mind. There are some in every state.


Finally, are you trying to say Pikeville medical center is a good program?

 

[RELAX11]

Re-read all of my posts. It has never been about rankings. The US news rankings are crap anyway. What it is about is the quality of training. This includes: volume of patients, difficulty of patients, seeing things you would not otherwise see, quality of attendings, quality of therapies your hospital can offer, exposure to specialites, autonomy and quality of residents that surround you. Like it or not, community hospitals are vastly inferior in each of these aspects. If you want the best training you can get, go to an academic center. If you just want mediocre training, fine- you can work at a crappy rural community program. If you want to work in a rural area, why not get the best training you can and then go back to the rural area to practice? Plus there are academic centers in rural areas: in Virginia, UVA definitely comes to mind. There are some in every state.


Finally, are you trying to say Pikeville medical center is a good program?

I give up, there is no hope for you.

 

[scdocusc]

I'm in no way trying to vilify any program or make a case that one is better than the other. I'm merely stating that both have disadvantages and advantages and that you shouldn't call these programs crappy without any solid data besides your own opinion. Actually, PMC is a pretty good hospital with way more neurosurgery than most larger hospitals. I'm not going to argue over petty details but it's rather shortsighted to call any residency program crappy as a professional. You might be working someday with an attending that went to one of these programs. I think both have advantages and disadvantages but to call one crappy and one superior is misleading. I think you are thinking of "community hospitals" as in 50 bed hospitals or tiny clinics. Logically, if they were not good enough to have a quality residency then they wouldn't be funded and approved.

 

[kyMD10]

Actually, PMC is a pretty good hospital with way more neurosurgery than most larger hospitals.

PMC has 2 neurosurgeons?

http://www.medicalleader.org/neurosurgery.html

I don't even know if PMC would make the top 10 hospitals in the state in Neurosurg (University, Norton, Jewish, Baptist in Louisville and Central Baptist, St. Josephs, and UK in Lexington all have more staff, and UofL and UKMC are the only two programs in the state [probably to be joined by Norton in the next few years] to have ACGME neurosurg residencies).

It's pretty obvious from reading this thread that a lot of DO schools seem to be doing their students a disservice by painting an overly negative (and possibly falsified?) view of academic medical centers. There's just no other way I can explain the ignorance that some people have used to substantiate community training programs and academic programs being on equal footing or having roughly equal opportunities.

I find this particularly odd because I know several people that have attended/graduated from PCSOM and most were under no pretense that matching into a community program was their top choice. Several did many away rotations at academic centers and worked their butts off to secure a spot in the best residency position, with many being successful in landing spots in middle tier academic centers. And my own personal experience interviewing alongside DOs at several top-25 programs in a moderately competitive specialty showed no signs of drinking the community program kool aid that so many people seem to have drank in this thread.

It's no secret that PCSOM, like many rural DO schools, heavily push the community hospital/primary care agenda, which I'm not opposed to at all because these programs do need residents and not everyone can train at an academic program. However, when this agenda involves misconceptions and falsehoods, I believe they aren't keeping their students' best interests in mind if they are also wanting their students to reach their full potential and make an informed decision regarding their future.

 

[Instatewaiter]

I give up, there is no hope for you.

Aren"t you a premed?

 

[scdocusc]

.

 

[scdocusc]

PMC has 2 neurosurgeons?

http://www.medicalleader.org/neurosurgery.html

I don't even know if PMC would make the top 10 hospitals in the state in Neurosurg (University, Norton, Jewish, Baptist in Louisville and Central Baptist, St. Josephs, and UK in Lexington all have more staff, and UofL and UKMC are the only two programs in the state [probably to be joined by Norton in the next few years] to have ACGME neurosurg residencies).

It's pretty obvious from reading this thread that a lot of DO schools seem to be doing their students a disservice by painting an overly negative (and possibly falsified?) view of academic medical centers. There's just no other way I can explain the ignorance that some people have used to substantiate community training programs and academic programs being on equal footing or having roughly equal opportunities.

I find this particularly odd because I know several people that have attended/graduated from PCSOM and most were under no pretense that matching into a community program was their top choice. Several did many away rotations at academic centers and worked their butts off to secure a spot in the best residency position, with many being successful in landing spots in middle tier academic centers. And my own personal experience interviewing alongside DOs at several top-25 programs in a moderately competitive specialty showed no signs of drinking the community program kool aid that so many people seem to have drank in this thread.

It's no secret that PCSOM, like many rural DO schools, heavily push the community hospital/primary care agenda, which I'm not opposed to at all because these programs do need residents and not everyone can train at an academic program. However, when this agenda involves misconceptions and falsehoods, I believe they aren't keeping their students' best interests in mind if they are also wanting their students to reach their full potential and make an informed decision regarding their future.

This is a good point. What I really should have said was that PMC sees a fair amount more neuro than people would give it credit for. Thank you for the correction