Swedish Medical Center

[biomechanicsrox]

Can anyone tell me about the residency program at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle? For awhile I had heard that it was a very good program, but recently some of my classmates have said that it has started to take a downturn in it's quality. This was always a program that I was interested in so any information or experiences that can be shared would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

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[Feli]

I've consistently heard it's a solid overall program that's high on academics and research but has very avg surgery numbers.

Low/avg numbers or being multi-scrubbed with other residents isn't necessarily the end of the world as long as the cases are good ones and the attendings are motivated to teach. Those sort of programs can definitely still give you what you need, but you need to really read and practice in cadaver lab to make sure you get the most of your relatively limited hands-on time as the primary surgeon in the OR. West Penn seemed to take that similar residency training philosophy when I rotated there... many multi-scrub cases but definitely some complex RF recon. It was my personal conculsion that you are better off doing a high volume surg program and just reading literature from the academics + avg volume programs, but everyone learns differently.

Doing a clerkship there (or any program you're considering) is ultimately the best way to find out for yourself. GL 👍

 

[Sed8&Intub8]

ooooh I didn't know this existed. Very interesting!

 

[densmore22]

Double scrubbing is a thing of the past at Swedish. They've added 3 new hospitals plus they're building another one. Rumor also has it another major hospital out there is struggling that was a direct competitor of Swedish and they may be acquiring it in the not so distant future. This last part is speculation at this point, but the 3 + 1 new one is for real. This adds >400 cases/year plus now more attendings than they currently have so it should be well into the 6-700 cases/year on top of what they already do. Remember, Swedish is basically a 3 year program in 2 years, since the 3rd years go off with Dr. Schuberth, AO in Germany, Russia, private practice with all the other docs and they're open to ANY other high quality rotations you want to do. They're all about your education there. Plus name me another program that has a list of attendings like this: Crawford, Christensen, Bouche, Hutchinson, Johnson, Labella, Lilja, McInnes, Vickers, Biermann, etc, etc, etc.

 

[biomechanicsrox]

Thank you very much for your responses. My boyfriend is currently going through the match process for allopathic residencies so we are doing a lot of research into pod residencies in the areas he is interested in. Thanks again!