First, sorry about the length of this post and congratulations on your invite to UAB. I almost cringe while writing this because I feel as if I am letting the "cat out of the bag" about how great a place UAB is to train. Perhaps I can serve as the unofficial ambassador considering that I'll soon be obtaining my MD from this institution. (I am a surgery applicant this year as well).
The city of Birmingham is nestled in a valley and I find it to be quite beautiful. Population size is somewhere between 100k to 200k with much of the population lying somewhat south of the city towards suburbia. The weather can range from the upper 90's in the heat of summer and can be quite humid at times (after all this is the South). Rarely does the temperature drop below the teens at even the coldest portions of winter and for most of the winter season will be well above freezing. If snow is your thing, you won't see any of it here (if there is even the faintest threat of snow it seems as if the whole state shuts down and your neighbors will stockpile commodities as if they were preparing for a nuclear fallout). Cost of living is second to none, but of course how far your budget will stretch depends upon the neighborhood in which you choose to live and how far you can stomach to commute. Most residents in fact own houses rather than rent. Night life is so so, but after all, as a surgery resident you will not be seeing much of that anyway. The political nature of Birmingham and Alabama for that matter is quite conservative but has far progressed from the racism days of nearly half a century ago. This was an obvious deterrent in the past but Birmingham boasts a pretty diverse population with an increasingly rising Mexican American influx.
The state past time is collegiate athletics so be prepared to discuss the subtle nuances of Alabama vs. Auburn for the duration of your training. There is plenty to do around Birmingham, tons of great restaurants, malls, golfing, hiking, you name it. If you like working out, UAB has just finished a brand new work out facility that is a mecca to physical fitness and is just two blocks away from the main hospital. This place has a huge pool complete with several adjoining whirlpools all connected with a lazy river, awesome racketball courts, several full basketball courts, treadmills/ellipticals/rowers/bikes galore all complete with several TV's on different channels (CNN, ESPN, etc.) with boxes on your machine where you plug in your headphones for sound, tons of freeweights, tons of machines, a rock climbing wall, and an elevated track. You name it, this new facility has it. This place is a site to behold and has recently been my new home away from home.
Now to the meat about UAB. This place too is a site to behold and each and every day I am floored by the size of this collusus of a medical institution. The city of Birmingham is divided into two haves, the north side and the south side with the south side's main dedidication being to UAB. At each and every turn you are met by a new research building or hospital dedicated facility. UAB has recently added a huge addition to the main hospital called the North Pavillion. This new facility houses the ER on its ground floor with state of the art trauma bays that can be converted to OR's instantaneously (equipped with surgical lighting, air filtration, and anesthesia booms). Right across the hall from the trauma bays are too CT scanners allowing quick and easy diagnosis. The main OR's are just a simple express elevator ride up 6 floors and you can be in the OR in no time.
The new North Pavillion facility houses two seperate floors dedicated to operating (that's right we have two floors of OR's in our huge new hospital megaplex). The 5th floor of the North Pavillion is used mainly by Cardiac, Thoracic, and Neuro. The 7th floor OR's (of which there are more in number than those on the 5th floor) are used by GI, Surg Onc, ENT, OB-GYN, and Ortho. The OR's are state of the art (I know this is a cliche but upon attending the recent American College of Surgeons Meeting and seeing the expo showcasing the latest and best of what surgical technology has to offer, I saw little that we did not already have at UAB). The UAB OR's are for lack of a better discriptor, ginormous. There are cameras in the lighting booms which broadcast images via a closed circuit network and can be seen by any LCD screen in any OR. Therefore, if you have an attending running several rooms at a time, which happens often, you can see what is taking place in adjoining rooms allowing them to scrub out and handle/supervise the tricky portions of cases with the Chief's. You can also record your operations on DVD (all rooms are equipped with DVD recorders) as well as listen to all your attendings favorite hits over the built in sound system in each OR suite. Also in each OR is a custom boom housing a computer, thus allowing the resident to transmit orders electronically before and after the case. Each and every OR is equipped with roughly four LCD screens which are on mobile booms attached to the ceiling and allow you to display CT images, clinic notes, other OR's/your own OR for us lowly med students as above, as well as vitals from anesthesia. This is truly a site to be seen and you will find no one more cutting edge than UAB is at the present.
The new North Pavillion facility houses the brand new surgical ICU's (main surgery ICU right down the hall from the OR's on the 7th floor; the same for the CV ICU on the 5th floor). The upper floors of the North Pavillion house the trauma floors as well as the very nice Trauma and Burn ICU facilities.
I belive the training at UAB is second to none. We have everything that one could ask for in a surgical residency (a VA Hospital, a Children's Hospital, a County Hospital for indigent care servicing the Jefferson County are called Cooper Green), and a fantastic refferal clinic (the Kirklin Clinic in honor of Dr. Kirklin who helped pioneer cardiac surgery) complete with around a dozen OR's for outpatient surgery. Ancillary staff is great (you will never have to do IV's, x-rays, etc...). All orders are placed via computer (a somewhat archaic program called PIN that is soon to be replaced by a new updated system that is supposed to be similar to the famed VA hospital system). All clinic notes are dictated by attendings and are available on hospital computers. In addition, all images are available on the hospital computers.
Every aspect of surgical training is addressed thoroughly at UAB and upon leaving this jugernaut you will be prepared to be either an academic leader or a shining star in the private hospital of your choice. The old badge that UAB is milignant is quite false. Don't get me wrong, the stories that I have heard from several decades prior warranted this banner but things have done a complete 180 since the reign of our current Chief of Surgery, Dr. Kirby Bland began. However, don't expect to do well here if you are not willing to work hard, as you will be surrounded by highly motivated people. Dr. Bland is a tremendous human being, respected and reveared by all in every academic setting, and is VERY enthusiastic about surgery and VERY approachable. He authored the definitive text on Breast Surgery and is the current chief editor of the American Journal of Surgery. I knew he was well respected but had little idea as to the depth of this respect until doing an away rotation as well as attending the recebt ACS meeting in October. The best thing is that he will "go to bat" for you as a resident in order to help you achieve the fellowship of your desire and our residents have little trouble year after year obtaining competitive fellowships at tremendous academic centers throughout the country. Last year's chief class had three which pursued plastics (Mayo Rochester, Emory, Memphis), Trauma (UAB), Advanced Laporoscopic (Emory), and Cardiac (Utah). This years class has members pursuing Cardiac (Virginia), Vascular (UAB), Surg Onc, and Advanced Laporoscopic.
The faculty at UAB our respected leaders throughout the nation and continue to contribute to the growing fund of surgical knowledge each and every day. We have people who many consider definitive experts in their respective surgical fields and I find it very humbling to be surrounded by such great academicians/teachers/mentors each and every day. You will be trained by the best to become the best. Who could want more?
If research is your thing, then UAB is the place for you. Research is not a requirement of our program but in recent years, roughly half of each class takes off time from there clinical training in order to pursue either bench and/or clinical research endeavors. It seams as if every day, they are either breaking ground or just about to complete a new research megaplex on each and every block of the UAB campus. This place is a nationally recognized research powerhouse and ranks somewhere in the top 10-15 in NIH funding. If you have some odd obscure research interest such as scale patterning on the dorsal fin of zebra fish I am sure you can find the world's expert somewhere on our campus that would love to have you in their lab.
To summarize, UAB is a top tier surgery powerhouse. State of the art facilities, excellent resident camraderie, cutting edge research, tons of pathology, world renowned faculty. You could not find a better place to pursue your surgical training if you so choose to. If offered an interview here, I would jump at the chance to be a part of this insititution. If I had to think of negatives regarding this program (a real stretch to do) it would be that there is little to no book allowance and the surgery skills lab needs to be developed better (it was just recently built last year and continues to expand). Feel free to PM if you wish to know more about UAB.
