San Joaquin

[tonem]

Does anyone have any personal experience with or know anything about the general surgery residency program at San Joaquin (CA)?

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[gandhino]

i went out there for an interview earlier this week. it's a small community-based program right outside stockton. my first interview was with a recent graduate who is now faculty there, and he was telling me that the program is currently on probation b/c of their lack of research availability which kind of confused me. he said they had been placed on probation once before about 5 years ago b/c the 2 chiefs had both failed their boards and their pass rate was under a certain percentage. anyhow, he "assured" me (whatever that means) that the probation was nothing serious and that they had remedied the problem. i also met with the chairman, who seemed to really care about the program. one of the downsides is that i only got to meet 1 of their 10 residents. i was told by him that the residents usually didn't hang out outside of work, thought they all pretty much got along at the hospital. 6/10 residents are married. the surgery department takes trauma call every night. they get plenty of cases (1200-1400), and they're in the or from day 1. the resident said there was plenty of autonomy in the or as you become more competent. the hospital has a very good ancillary staff, so there's minimal scutwork. they usually get 2 weekends off/month. hope that helps.

 

[tonem]

thanks for the reply ghandino,

I interviewed there this week too (after the post). As far as the research thing, they've hired two new faculty members to help increase the amount of research they produce. They also had a problem with affiliation that has since been rectified by newly signed contracts with UC Davis and St. Joseph's hospital in Stockton. They are the de facto trauma center for their part of San Joaquin Valley and hope to make it official soon as a Level II center (lack full-time neurosurgery to be Level I, I believe). But the nearest Level I centers are UCDavis in Sacramento, UCSF-Fresno to the south, and Concord to the West. I was fortunate in that I was able to meet a couple more residents than you did. All in all it seemed like a nice low-key, non-traditional surgery program that operates a lot on a mostly underserved population. I thought the on-campus housing was a novel feature that allows you to take call from home because it takes as much time to walk in from there as it does to walk down from the call rooms. One of the senior residents says he often eats dinner at home, plays with the kids for awhile then goes back to work. How cool is that!