An answer to some of the above questions:
Conferences - they're mostly awesome but yes, sometimes not well attended due to the work heavy schedule. Everyone does try to go though. The teaching is great, I've had no complaints.
Grand Rounds - they use to be esoteric and research heavy but are not more clinically oriented. This year they were great.
Clinical Experience - you rotate at Olive View as an intern the SAME amount of months that Olive View residents rotate on the wards. Half of your inpatient medicine ward months as an intern are at Olive View so the bread and butter stuff is there. Honestly though, how many cellulitis, UTI, COPD exacerbation, CHF exacerbation, pneumonia cases do you have to see to be good at it? A sub-I could manage these fairly well. As a resident you can go back to Olive View or opt to go to Harbor for a month too. At one time we could go to the VA but that's gone...too bad. Keep in mind as a second and third year you are doing the majority of rotations at Santa Monica Hospital which is a community hospital and totally bread and butter. Trust me if you want bread and butter, you're not going to be lacking whatsoever.
Outpatient - great lecture series and you feel relatively competent with primary care in general. That being said, there's still much to be desired in this aspect as outpatient is definitely more challenging than inpatient in my opinion.
Transplant patients - if you can manage pancreatitis or pneumonia in someone with a liver or kidney (or both!) transplant, you can manage it in anyone. If you can manage antifungals, antivirals, and immunosuppressants, you can do it anywhere. It doesn't go the other way around. Yes you might have to rely on multiple annoying consults but you're learning from it. A lot of my friends at outside programs don't even know how to dose tacrolimus and don't even know what PTLD is or how to manage GVHD. Bone marrow transplants are a great learning experience.
Forms - yes they suck and yes I hate filling out these things. Oh well. It's made up for being able to give verbal orders to most nurses. Aside from ordering tests and antibiotics you don't really need to get up and fill out a form in the middle of the night (unless it's a STAT echo, or STAT CT chest, etc). As a nightfloater, there have been times I've had to see patients less than 5 times (obviously nothing acute was going on - no chest pain, dyspnea or falls).
Match list - superb. 100% match rate in GI and cards in the last 5 years (well one guy didn't match initially since he kind of told programs they weren't for him but few months later did get into a program because of a phone call). Two years ago 14 out of 14 people matched into cards.
Extracurricular - the mantra, work hard play hard applies. As an intern, we went out pre-call, post-call, normal days - you name it. Sure I didn't stay up till 3 am pre-call but we went to dinner together maybe 4 out of 7 nights a week. We regularly get together in and out of the hospital. You're living in LA, so much to do. We get along well and we want residents who play nice too.
Emergency Room - the Reagan ER leaves much to be desired. In a way this is good since you'll be doing much of the initial diagnosis. I mean don't get me wrong, they stabilize the patient and get them ready to be admitted, but that's kind of about it (it's really dependent on who's working that day/night). Don't expect Harbor-UCLA or USC Emergency Medicine quality but they do good enough.
Hospital - beautiful. An I.M. Pei creation. And not that it's the most important thing in the world, the hospital food is GOOD. Find me a hospital with better food and I will buy you a shot of Patron...seriously.
In conclusion: UCLA was probably one of the best choices I've made in my career. I've had some of the best friends and experiences here. I matched in the specialty I wanted and made some lifelong contacts. Yes you can get ur ass kicked but isn't that what you want in a residency program? Wherever you guys go, learn to manage stress in a healthy manner. Complain when you can change something but keep it to yourself if there's nothing that can be done. You'll do well.
