Hey Everyone:
Wanted to put down my notes/impressions on some specific programs I interviewed at this cycle. Searching on SDN for program specific information often didn't yield much, so I hope next year's applicants can find this information useful. As context, I go to a medical school in Southern California with 229 Step1/251 Step2, 1 honors, mostly passed, one red flag with me repeating one rotation. I applied to about 30 programs. Here are my impressions:
Montefiore Internal Medicine Program
-Overall the program is really big. There are three firms or mini-colleges, each with 54~ housestaff in each. So each entering class is around 54 Interns, with a few them being Neurology and Anesthesia. The prelim program will eventually be absorbed by the Neuro/Anes categorical programs.
-The Moses Weiler Program is separate from the Wakefield and Jacobi Program (somewhat confused me). Most of the rotations are done at the Moses hospital, with a few done at the Weiler Hospital, which is shared among the two other programs.
-The hospital is main tertiary hospital for the Bronx. Doesn't have to compete with the Manhattan Hospitals for patients. Also very strong focus for the undeserved community. Lots of interesting pathology, with patients being more sick at Moses and more chronic diseases at Weiler.
-Transitioning to EPIC to both inpatient and outpatient soon.
-It's a 6+2 system, with 2 weeks of the 6 weeks being nightfloat. There are 8 teams at Moses, 6 teams at Weiler. Some are large (normal 1 attending, 2 interns, 1 resident with hella medical students), some are small teams with just an intern, resident and attending with just 1 MS3/1MS4. Caps around 8 per intern + 2 if Subi also there.
-Drip system of admissions. No call schedule, just short/long days with nights.
-Condensed 3 month research block that you apply during Intern year.
-New Hospitalist Track Coming Soon
-There seems to be a really strong fellowship match, lots of research opportunities with the fellowship research director.
-MICU/CCU getting new additions, more beds in future.
-I thought the PD was very friendly and seem to enjoy engaging with us while we waited to be interviewed. Everyone spoke very highly of her.
-Lottery for Subsidized Housing. 650$ FOR OWN STUDIO. Internet extra. 60$ Extra parking. Can stay for all three years. Housing is right next to Moses Hospital. Some people do take the train from Upper East Side of Manhattan.
UCI Internal Medicine Residency Program
-Program's has new PD a few years back that really seemed to have raised the quality of the program and made it more resident focused.
-3+1 system that seems pretty awesome. (Lot of residents said this was a big plus)
-22 Categoricals with 25 prelims
-Residents do rotations at three different hospitals, West LA VA, Long Beach Memorial and UCI Medical Center. (One VA population, one mix of private/public patients and other is like county as there is no county hospital). However this does mean you'll have to drive everywhere, but at the same time, residents live in a lot of different places.
-ICU and CCU heavy (9 weeks total)
-There's a formalized curriculum that teaches business, ultrasound, teaching skills (not sure about the quality)
-Large percentage of residents went into fellowship (14/22 the last year). It seemed like there was a lot of resources for people who wanted to do research.
-Overall, I got the sense that residents were generally happy and enjoyed living in Eastern parts of LA and that teaching was overall good, but of course can be a miss with some attendings.
CPMC Internal Medicine Residency Program
-Basically Sutter Health's Internal Medicine Program. Main hospital is the referral site for all the other campuses with things that they can't figure out. New hospital is being built, but it wont' open until 2020.
-Morning report was the best I've seen. The chefs seemed to have really good structure and teaching. It was heavily staffed by faculty and they all went around one by one to ask questions, but didn't seem to get too into the weeds between attendings.
-Dartmouth 3rd years, UCSF 4th years and other school Subis were there. Dartmouth Students seemed to really enjoy their rotations there especially.
-Seems like the pathology is pretty varied, even though UCSF was there.
-ED is not level 1 trauma, but whatever not important right?
-They have a GI/Pulm/CC and a large Cards fellowship program.
-Residents seemed pretty happy. Mostly US Grads from all over.
-Many people live in the city, but some live even as far as Berkeley. If you don't get parking, you get 360$ back each quarter. Overall, San Francisco seems like a really expensive city to live in, even more than NY.
-Food was pretty good.
-Hospital seems a little dated, slightly tiny, but seemed to have all the services.
-Seems like residents do a lot of research/presentations (Lots of posters, and many go to ACP etc etc.) Was told people do research with UCSF or Stanford given the proxmity.
-Alumni have almost even breakdown of fellowships, primary care and hospitalists.
-Many of the graduates end up staying working at the Sutter Health System if they want to stay there.
-1/2 Day Longitudinal Weekly Clinic close by, shuttle takes you there.
-5 medical teams, 1 ICU team with team caps of ~18 patients. Not sure how often they cap, but seemed like they were busy.
-5 day call cycle with short, medium, pre, long, post.
-1 Month SFGH ER Rotation. Additional optional rotations you can do SFGH or Highland.
Cedar Sinai Internal Medicine Residency Program
-The hospital located in West LA. It was pretty nice and huge. Program itself is very large, with about 32 categorical positions. There used to be 44, but the programs' relationship with West LA VA is now cut down to 25% total time spent there rather than 50% of the time so they had to cut back on the positions.
-There are 4 wards team, 4 ICU teams. 6 Months of ICU/MICU/CCU throughout the 3 years. Cardiology teaching of course is considered very strong. MICU teaching was known to be strong from what a prelim told me.
-You do 1 month Wards at VA and a few other rotations, consult services there as well.
-4+1 model with various different options for continuity clinic (depending on your interest)
-Morning report was really meh, especially compared to the other programs I've seen. People didn't seem that engaged.
-Apparently lots of opportunity to do research. Fellowship match was really impressive, with lots of GI and Cards and Pulm/CC within and at other decent programs.
-There's a new Primary Care Track that you can apply into which trades inpatient time and ICU time for more outpatient related training. Can apply anytime 1st year.
-UCLA Medical Students do their rotations at CS, 3rd and 4th years with away SUBIs as well.
-Talking to the Residents, it seems like the big pluses about this program is the wide variety of different research opportunities as well as the location of being in West LA. Since the ACA, it seems like the patient load for CS has really increased.
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency Program
-Community Hospital Affiliated with Stanford (2 SCVMC Interns each month go to VA and Stanford and there's always 1 stanford team at SCVMC). The R2s lament hating going to stanford since it's often very far away from SCVMC and doesn't add much to training?
-Morning Reports seemed sparsely attended, was so so.
-New Program director from CPMC (6 months ago). He was really friendly, took 5 minutes of his day and got to talk to all of us.
-New Hospital to open around 2017, but has some litigation and residents doubtful it will open on time.
-There are 8 medical teams, Intern Cap of 10 and frequently Caps (Interns work hard since ACA)
-Strong ICU Training: Closed, integrated with CCU. Step down unit also there, taken care of by medicine teams, good for hospitalist training. (SCVM grads are known to be highly prepared for Pulm/CC fellowship)
-Level 1 Trauma, Burn Unit in Hospital and Community Hospital for large region of Santa Clara
-Subspeciality teaching strong apparently.
-Breakdown of Graduates
-30% Fellowship with strong at PulmCC at Stanford. Nephrology and GI.
-40% Hospitalist
-30% Primary Care
-No specialist service, so medicine in charge for a lot of stuff.
-Interns have cont. clinic. Able to have 2ndary Clinic based on interest (Injection Clinic, FNA Clinic, Transition of Care Clinic, Saboxone Clinic, Backpack Clinic, Homeless Clinic, TB Refugee Clinic and HIV Clinic.)
-4 Pathways Interns can go into (research, ambulatory, global health and hospitalist, soon medical education) - According to R3, doesn't really matter that much.
-Generally high cost of living.
-Lots of Posters and Publications. Strong association with Stanford.
-Patient populatoin 60 languages used in translator.
-Good Anxilary Staff, social worker on weekends, pharmacy student/resident on each time.
UCLA Harbor Internal Medicine Program
-Level 1 trauma ER in the County, County Hospital with 6 teams.
-Half Day once a weekly continuity clinic (versus 4+1)
-UCLA medical students rotate through here.
-Morning Report was well organized. Noon conference was decent. Nothing out of the ordinary
-65% do fellowship with remaining staying academic Internal Medicine, Hospitalist and Private Internal Medicine.
-Program known to have strong clinical training with lots of autonomy.
-Affiliation with LA BioMed Research Institute, ability to do some research there. Mainly clinical and some industry affiliation, especially with Rheumatology.
-Bilingual Bonus? (pass some language test and you can get 120$ a month?!)
-Rosetta Stone Spanish in all the computers.
-off the 110 highway, with many people living more on the West Side of LA
-Residents required to do scholarly projects and QI, but most people will publish.
-PGY 3 Spends 1 Month at Kaiser Outpatient
-You will spend 1 month at Ronald Reagan UCLA, though most people don't like going to this rotation because it's a primarily tertiary referral center and it's also very far away.
-17 Categoricals with 5 prelim spots -> extending to 14 prelims next year because they are the TYs. Now all teams will have 1 R with 2 Interns, instead of some having 1/1 teams (which I heard was pretty exhausting for the team). Ward months down to 4 months.
-Fellowship match was really impressive, bunch of GI, CV, Pulm/CC.
-Out of all of the programs I've been to, I felt the residents there were the most tight knit. Talking to a R3, it seemed like the program was really toxic a few years ago.
-Program has a large number of in-house fellows that end up taking a significant portion of their own residents, especially pulm/cc and cardiology
-Cerner EHR.
Olive View Internal Medicine Residency Program
-4+1 Program (21 Categoricals, 12 prelims)
-Community with large hispanic population, strong emphasis on teaching.
-New Hospital rotations as R2/R3 for 1.5 months with admissions, med consults and procedure service that is being rolled out.
-You are a UCLA Affiliate -> UCLA Graduate Housing, and benefits.
-Breakfast Burritos are apparently legendary (confirmed by various sources)
-Outpatient Clinic rotations at Van Nuys and Olive View.
-Location: About a 30 minute drive from West LA Proper. Many people live at various different places since you are always against traffic. Parking isn't an issue.
-Hospital is a large community hospital with 8 medicine teams. Categorical Residents will do 1.5-2 months at Ronald Regan UCLA for MICU, CCU and Wards. No one really minds heading to UCLA proper to do a rotation there. UCLA residents also do their residency here as well, though, the IM Olive View Program is the only dedicated residency at Olive View.
-60% of people do fellowships in socal, with 40% do general.
-Teaching is a very strong aspect of the program with it winning tons of awards from medical students from UCLA.
-Morning report was well organized with an interesting case, taught well. Decently attended by everyone. Noon Conferences and Morning report is mandatory for all residents.
-Recently got Cerner EHR.
University of Illinois Chicago Internal Medicine Program
-Being Employees of UIC, you can take any classes, with some residents getting free MPH's aparently?
-Morning Report was really well run with a friendly PD that has been there for quite some time.
-Large program with 145ish residents in IM, EM/IM, Med/Peds, Prelims with 30 categorical positions.
-You do rotations at UIC, Jessse Brown VA (50/50 split). You share the Jesse Brown ICU with Northwestern Residents.
-Teams have PGY2 Running team and dedicated PGY3 for teaching.
-12+2 schedule as a PGY2/3.
-People seem to be able to live everywhere in Chicago, with a large majority of residents driving. I did see some faculty and residents take the metro home.
-Cerner EHR
-Large proportion of Categorical Residents are from out of state. 70% go on to do fellowships with 40% Staying at UIC
-Emphasized residents being involved in research, seems like very fellowship focused program.
University of Hawaii Internal Medicine Program
-This program involves rotations at several hospitals throughout Oahu/Honolulu. Wards/ICU rotations at Kaiku Hospital and Queens Hospital. Kaiku Hospital is more of a private setting with private attendings overseeing and residents teaching/leading the teams. Queens hospital is the main academic center. About 4 teams at each hospital, cap of 10 patients per intern. You'll also do another 1 month ICU rotation at another third hospital (which I can't remember)
-There's a lot of poverty and health disparities that you see at Queens hospital. In addition, Queens hospital apparently serves as a tertiary referral center for many of the other populations at US Territories and Islands. For example, people who got exposed to US Nuclear testing back in the 50s get their care here at Queens. So you see lots of crazy tropical and nuclear related pathologies.
-EPIC EHR
-Rest of the rotations are at various outpatient clinics throughout Honolulu, including VA sties and private practices.
-I got a good vibe from all of the residents, with a majority of them being originally from there (I wasn't). There is a significant portion of residents that are international (Thailand, Japan, Philipines). Often, these are people with extensive clinical experience in their home country under their belt). Working with international residents would have been a plus for me.
-There seemed to be a strong emphasis for geriatics and cardiology fellowships for the Alumni (I think they recently started a new cards fellowship) and a lot of people from Hawaii end up staying for those two programs.
-I applied here on a whim and I found myself REALLY liking the program and all that it has to offer. Some concerns I had of course was the fact that Oahu is small and can be expensive. It was a tough choice not to rank this number 1 given the location/hospital system/residents but when talking to my advisors, Hawaii didn't seem to garner a reputation for better clinical training compared to the mainland programs I applied to.
