U of Florida Program, any thoughts?

[TexanMD]

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Hey Ya'll,

Just got an invite from UofF. Anyone out there able to give me (and others) insight into the program? Didactics, Call schedule, the environment in gainsville. Thx a lot.

 

[Trisomy13]

Gainesville is a small town, pleasant enough, near the west coast of FL. Also a college town with all the good and bad that comes with that, depending on your perspective.

UF program has a good reputation, Anesthesia active in the ICU, and should provide all the training you would need. It is a hardworking program, and residents seemed to get out fairly late, fairly often. The faculty I met during my interview there all seemed friendly and knowledgable. UF is one of the programs spoken about as one of the best out there, from what I remember (one of the 25 programs in the top 10 ).

The cons for me when I was making my list... northern Florida in general - flat, humid, and not near anything; a couple of the residents rubbed me the wrong way during the lunch - one or two were flat out cocky and that's not my kind of environment (majority were very friendly/normal though); couple of personal flags that i don't think are necessarily universal "cons" so i won't mention them.

if you are thinking about going to the south and you got an interview at UF, definitely go check it out.

 

[Gator05]

Hi there,

I'm a current resident at UF, and I'll say up front that I like my program a lot. There is an immense commitment towards resident education. We have daily pertinent lectures, as well as excellent intra-op teaching. The teaching isn't confined to attendings; upper levels always giving mini-lessons, tips and tricks in common conversation. UF invented the human patient simulator, and uses it well. Our electronic resources are cutting-edge. "Let's do something new...let's try this....have you done that this way before?....". Residents "run" the OR on call and at nights, in charge of running the board and assigning cases. We have a "transition to practice" curriculum in the CA-3, whereby groups of residents are assigned their own set of rooms to run as their own practice.

UF's continually improving. We're not perfect, never have been, but we're working on it. We've hired LOTS of new CRNA's to help with the work load. Many of these CRNA's are assigned weekend/evening shifts to allow residents time to pre-op during the afternoons. Our days are getting shorter. In addition, while the work week can sometimes be long, we have a night-float and work only 1 Saturday/month on standard OR months. When you're at work, you're working; when not, you're home. This isn't the best set-up for everyone, but certainly has its attractive elements.

We are a small town, pleasant in all but the peak of summer. We're no more west coast than east, and are pleasantly protected from hurricanes. We're hilly by Florida standards. 🙂

It's not a perfect program. Our call schedule isn't for everyone. While we have specialty rotations, the general case mix is sometimes intermingled. The opposite is true; hearts, peds, neuro, etc are part of your general case mix. We do a lot of SICU months (~6), which is I think becoming the norm. There are some late evenings, but I don't think many residents on this forum are routinely home by 3pm either.

Finally, even on weeks when we work hard, our program director (and the chairman, and the faculty in general) looks out for us. Life happens even during residency. Our PD has consistently gone out of his way for us, above and beyond any and all expectations in dealing with issues both inside and outside of departmental affairs.

I love my life at home with my family, and it sure is fun to go into work each day.

Please feel free to PM with any questions.

 

[Jennylee258]

If you could describe a typical day in terms of hours and protected teaching time? I heard some programs are bad with sick days and personal days. how is this one?

thanks

Jenny

 

[Laryngospasm]

Hi there,

I'm a current resident at UF, and I'll say up front that I like my program a lot. There is an immense commitment towards resident education. We have daily pertinent lectures, as well as excellent intra-op teaching. The teaching isn't confined to attendings; upper levels always giving mini-lessons, tips and tricks in common conversation. UF invented the human patient simulator, and uses it well. Our electronic resources are cutting-edge. "Let's do something new...let's try this....have you done that this way before?....". Residents "run" the OR on call and at nights, in charge of running the board and assigning cases. We have a "transition to practice" curriculum in the CA-3, whereby groups of residents are assigned their own set of rooms to run as their own practice.

UF's continually improving. We're not perfect, never have been, but we're working on it. We've hired LOTS of new CRNA's to help with the work load. Many of these CRNA's are assigned weekend/evening shifts to allow residents time to pre-op during the afternoons. Our days are getting shorter. In addition, while the work week can sometimes be long, we have a night-float and work only 1 Saturday/month on standard OR months. When you're at work, you're working; when not, you're home. This isn't the best set-up for everyone, but certainly has its attractive elements.

We are a small town, pleasant in all but the peak of summer. We're no more west coast than east, and are pleasantly protected from hurricanes. We're hilly by Florida standards. 🙂

It's not a perfect program. Our call schedule isn't for everyone. While we have specialty rotations, the general case mix is sometimes intermingled. The opposite is true; hearts, peds, neuro, etc are part of your general case mix. We do a lot of SICU months (~6), which is I think becoming the norm. There are some late evenings, but I don't think many residents on this forum are routinely home by 3pm either.

Finally, even on weeks when we work hard, our program director (and the chairman, and the faculty in general) looks out for us. Life happens even during residency. Our PD has consistently gone out of his way for us, above and beyond any and all expectations in dealing with issues both inside and outside of departmental affairs.

I love my life at home with my family, and it sure is fun to go into work each day.

Please feel free to PM with any questions.

Sounds pretty nice, I spent some time in Gainesville when I was younger, really enjoyed the atmosphere. But I was a lot younger then, not sure what it would be like now that Im an old man. Used to float down the Ichetucknee, now that was fun.

 

[Gator05]

Typical day? Hmm.

Well, arrive ~0630 to set-up your room, and then upstairs for conference each day at 0700. Conference until ~0745, go downstairs, grab your narcotics, see your patient, roll-back to the OR. Induce, underway, morning break, continue cases, lunch, continue cases, rooms come down between 3pm and...never. Luckily, late-stay folks (you stay late, up until 9-10pm although usually earlier once per week) start relieving residents around 5pm. If you haven't been relieved by 6pm, a mole resident comes in to relieve you. There are days where it's just too busy to let everyone out (true anywhere), but those days are decreasing in number and severity.

After you're finished with your room, go see any preops you have, and then call your attending. If your room is running late, you'll often either be broken out in the afternoons to see your preops, or other residents are often available to see all of the inpatients.

When I interviewed this was a pretty standard routine it seems. UF differed from some by having the OR's hold until 0800 in order that Anesthesia can complete their conference.

Other cool thinks I forgot to mention? Dedicated transplant, TEE, pediatric cardiac anesthesia, and acting SICU fellow rotations. Acting SICU fellow can even start in CA-2 year if you've done enough months.

I recently had to suddenly take some time off for personal reasons, and the program couldn't have been more helpful. Leave days were given, I was told to take as many as necessary.

 

[Idiopathic]

I liked my interview there, and would have been happy to train there. I posted extensively on this subject last year actually.