UAB Anesthesia Program

[Cathyran]

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Hey all,
I am scheduled to interview at UAB later on in the interview season. I was initially pretty excited about going there, but one of my fellow classmates interviewed there and had told me that the residents are always paired with a CRNA during their peds anesthesia rotation. I knew they have a private practice peds hospital, but I understood that they still get to do their own cases. Does anyone know if there's any truth to this?

 

[Orin]

...CRNA during their peds anesthesia rotation. I knew they have a private practice peds hospital, but I understood that they still get to do their own cases.

When I interviewed there last year, the chair and residents acknowledged that it was a problem due to the Children's hospital having a private CRNA group but that they were actively addressing it and expected the addition of a new wing with more OR space would create more opportunities for the residents. The upper levels suggested the CRNAs were more than happy to let you do the cases if you showed any initiative and were real helpful.

Can't tell you what happened with that though.

 

[pd4emergence]

Here's the deal. It's a private md group at the children's hospital. Its a billing thing for that group. I'm not defending that situation but with a resident only in the room the attendings can only cover two rooms. As for the experience there, 2-3 months over 3 years is tolerable. You learn what you need to to be able to do private practice bread and butter peds. Uab is a weird situation when it comes to peds in general. All of the peds transplants are done at the main hospital, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs. It's kinda strange but that is the way it evolved. I think change is underway but it's gonna take awhile. So bottom line, the ped experience is just ok, if you want a program that has a reallystrong peds experience, you might want to look somewhere else. My opinion is that the program is great, but peds is it's weakest point. There have been some younger very good peds folks hired within the last 5 years by that group and things are getting better. I honestly don't see the situation changing there for a while. Those guys in that group have a pretty sweet deal and aren't going anywhere.