Please help me rank these programs.

[blueberry2k]

Hello, I have Interviews at these programs, But wont be able to attend all of them due to financial reasons. I will have to cancel some of them. Please help me rank these according to fellowship opportunities/ reputation/ friendliness.

1.Saint barnabas ,NJ
2.St Vincents, MA
3.kalamazoo,MI
4. Ball memorial ,Indiana
5.Jewish hosp of cincinnati
6. Mercy hosp and med centre, Il
7.Rosalind franklin.Il
8.Advocate chrtist,IL
9.Orlando regional health centre,Fl
10.newark beth Israel,NJ
11.mount sinai elmhurst,NY
12.Mountainside,MY
13 WRCS/forum health, OH.

Thank you all.

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[iamcatwoman]

I am a current resident at ORMC. It's a really friendly program. Fairly small in comparison to others, but a great working environment. There's plenty of socializing, and all the attendings are very approachable. Teaching is excellent, and there's plenty of pathology in our population. It's a very diverse program with lots of FMGs, which i personally see as an advantage.

Scut work is non-existent, and there is no difficulty in obtaining specialty consults. Orders are all computerized, and nurses will take verbal orders - which makes a huge difference when you're on call.

Call in ward rotations is 1 in 4, but only over night 1 in 8. There is currently no night float for interns, allowing them with more time for sub speciality rotations.

AND ALL THE FOOD IS FREE!!

 

[blueberry2k]

I am a current resident at ORMC. It's a really friendly program. Fairly small in comparison to others, but a great working environment. There's plenty of socializing, and all the attendings are very approachable. Teaching is excellent, and there's plenty of pathology in our population. It's a very diverse program with lots of FMGs, which i personally see as an advantage.

Scut work is non-existent, and there is no difficulty in obtaining specialty consults. Orders are all computerized, and nurses will take verbal orders - which makes a huge difference when you're on call.

Call in ward rotations is 1 in 4, but only over night 1 in 8. There is currently no night float for interns, allowing them with more time for sub speciality rotations.

AND ALL THE FOOD IS FREE!!

Iamcatwoman,

Thank you very much for you comments . I have read some where that this hospital was on probation 2/3 yrs back. Could you comment more on that. Is there any problem with accreditation?

Thanks.

 

[roadrunnerrita]

You know you can apply for extra 4th year loans to travel for interviews if you have to?
Print estimates for airfare and hotels to the places you want to interview (up to 12) and turn them into your financial aid office. The rates suck, but you can borrow up to $15,000!

 

[blueberry2k]

You know you can apply for extra 4th year loans to travel for interviews if you have to?
Print estimates for airfare and hotels to the places you want to interview (up to 12) and turn them into your financial aid office. The rates suck, but you can borrow up to $15,000!

Thanks roadrunnerrita, I am an international grad, so that option is not there...but appreciate it.......

 

[iamcatwoman]

Hmmm, would have to look into the probation thing for you. Certainly have heard nothing about that myself. But can say for sure that there is no problem with accreditation.

 

[blueberry2k]

Hmmm, would have to look into the probation thing for you. Certainly have heard nothing about that myself. But can say for sure that there is no problem with accreditation.

Thanks a lot for ur comment.

I also talked to the coordinator and she mentioned that they have got full RCC accreditation.

 

[Doconthego]

Hi, I didn't want to retype this after I wrote it all out on another thread so I just cut and pasted.

I've been reading for a while but never posted anything. I thought I would jump in here and make a plug for my old program. I trained in Kalamazoo in med-peds and graduated a few years ago. I worked in medicine half of the time. I also interviewed at Wright State but obviously I have much less experience with that. I loved my program and IM was a big part of it.

Program Director: Dr Loehrke was the IM program director and still is. He is awesome. Great director, great teacher and role model and a resident advocate to the bitter end. He will make sure you become a great doctor and that you are not killed in the process.

Faculty: Kalamazoo is a community hospital system with a pretty strong university affiliation. That means that a lot of your teaching is done by private practitioners. In Kalamazoo that accounts for almost half of the teaching. The other half is done by the full time faculty that work for the residency program. In some other community programs more than 95% of the resident contact was with private attendings. Some university programs 0% was with private attendings. Kalamazoo has a good mix. Some private attendings are not interested in teaching although they may be great role models. Usually these people are not included in the teaching staff. Only those that want to teach and are good at it are included. I came across a few exceptions but that was pretty rare. The full time faculty are excellent. They all were very accessable and approachable. I interviewed in some places where the residents were afraid to ask questions. You won't find anything like that in Kalamazoo.

Hospitals: There are two hospitals and your time is divided evenly between them. Borgess hospital is a very good hospital with some excellent teachers. Unfortunately for Borgess, Bronson Hospital is a few miles away and outshines it. Bronson hospital opened a brand new hospital around 2001 or 2002 and they set the mark. It seemed like almost every day I was there were always some hospital executives from around the country there checking out the hospital. This had more to do with how it operates than with the building itself although that is very nice too.

Clinic: THis was important to me because I was going to be doing primary care. Out of all the places I interviewed (Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Wayne State, U of Michigan, Wright State, Baylor, U of K, Baystate, Albany, Cincinnatti and a few others I can't remember right now) Kalamazoo had the best run resident clinic. That was clear at the interview and was true when I got there. The IM clinic and med-peds clinic are in the same location so essentially I was working in the IM clinic. I was well prepared for practice. They have a good EMR system (don't know what they are using now) which was good because my office transitioned to one just as after I graduated and I started in practice.

Fellowships: I was not so interested in this but my co-residents who were did fine. I think in med-peds they got into places like mayo clinic, cleveland clinic, IU, and others. IM seemed to be doing pretty well to but I don't know all the details. Several classmates in IM got pretty good cardiology programs, Harvard. ID at emory, GI -UCLA,

Research: I was not intersted in this but it is required so I did it. There are plenty of people you can work with but you have to go and actively get a project. They are not going to come find you. If you want to do cardiology you should work with Dr Fischell at Borgess. The guy has a couple hundred patents on medical devices including the cypher stent and I saw him on the news a few months ago with some new implantable device that detects MI's before the patient feels it. you can do research in lots of different areas. GI research is not so strong but they let a classmate of mine go to another place as an elective to do GI research. ICU wasn't when I was there but now they have great ICU faculty and are starting a fellowship so that will probably change if it hasn't already.

Procedures: I was a procedure hound and got plenty of them. Some people are shy and get only a few but the procedures are there to be had if you look for them. Where I am I actually don't need to do that many but in my first job I did need them so I am glad I had the experience. I spoke to some recent grads who said that the new ICU staff really gets the resident doing procedures and had them well trained in them. They have a new simulation lab and are doing some work there on a pretty regular basis.

I did not rank Kalamazoo first. I went for two bigger name programs for some reason that escapes me now. Thankfully I didn't get into my first choice as two of my classmates went there and pretty regularly called me crying and hating medicine. One tried to transfer into our program but there were no spaces. Really I think I ended up being a better and much happier doctor than they did.