One of the residents, who will be chief resident next year, went to my medical school... so I talked to her at lengths about the program. Here are my impressions from her and from my interview day:
PROS: Big one- Call schedule/lifestyle. I interviewed at the major institutions in CA, OR, and WA and they were by far the most humane when it came to call schedules and patient load. It just seemed like a perfect balance between the amount of patients you take care of and yet still have time to read and study. My friend at UCD said they typically carry 5-8 patients. They have a night float system, so you only take 2 friday night calls and one saturday night call per month. Calls also appear lighter on the selective/outpatient months... which is something to look carefully at with other programs. It appears Davis has jeopardy calls or home "mommy" calls, whereas other programs will have evening ER shifts or q4 evening calls during these months. A ward day begins at 6 am and sign out is at 4 pm, with one day per week the intern stays until 6:30 pm to give signout to nightfloat. Also, if you are thinking about pursuing a fellowship, you need to think about when you are going to be able to find time to do research with a faculty member, away electives, etc etc.
Another pro- Education emphasis, which also correlates somewhat with the other pro above. The morning report and noon conferences were well attended, and the residents actually got to listen and participate instead of frantically finishing notes or arriving late. There were 8 or 9 attendings at the morning report, which was wonderful to have their clinical pearls and insight.
CONS (which weren't for me but I could imagine being for some people):
"NAME"- UC Davis doesn't carry the prestige of being able to say you matched at Stanford, CHOP, Boston Children's.... but honestly I don't think it will end up negatively affecting your long term goals if you trained there. It still has a good reputation. Perhaps if you want a prestigious career or be chair of pediatrics someday if may be nice to have the big name but this isn't the case for me. I think you should just ask yourself what is most important to you and what your goals are for your residency program. I think you will get a great education- they have a huge catch area and see a lot of interesting cases, plus a lot of bread and butter as well. Plenty of residents go into fellowships at Stanford, UCSF, etc.... and honestly I think a huge part of fellowship is making contacts in the field and doing research.
Location- Some may want a larger city like San Francisco, LA, Seattle. (However, there are still a lot of recreational activities/opportunities and cost of living is much more affordable than the larger cities)
So there's my two cents for what it's worth... hope it was helpful!
