I am not sure what the previous poster's experiences where like at St Chris or perhaps where they heard their information from, but i strongly disagree with the way St Chris has been portrayed. As a 4th year student at Drexel I have had plenty of experience at St chris, on my gen peds rotation, during my surgery rotation as well as during a 4th year subi, and subspecialty electives. St Chris is an extremely busy , level 1 trauma center, in the heart of an extremely underserved area. On my surgery rotation, we worked on ICU patients. The ICU was always full or close to it, with transfers/new admissions daily. I saw kids with all sorts of interesting pathologies. On surgery we also worked with CCU/special care unit kids which both units were full the entire time. The general peds residents staff these units, and seem to have autonomy in their patient care (however there is always a ICU attending day and night to help the residents out). It seems as though the interns cover the Special care unit while upper years cover the more critical patients DId i mention st Chris has the only burn unit in the wide area (not sure how far) and a NICU that seems to be packed to the limit. The general peds service was extremely busy with all sorts of various pathologies. The teaching was usually top notch as all the attendings are somewhat trained in how to teach. The subspecialties are generally pretty strong ( the woman who writes the peds infectious disease textbook is an attending there as well as Dr Digeorge of Digeorge Syndrome). It is true that the residents seem not to like the GI department, but apparently they still end up at good places for GI fellowships. SO as far as the previous posters comments go, I am not sure what your experiences were like, but I personally will be ranking St Chris somewhere near the top of my list .
