Can anyone comment on quality of residents/program/fellowship placement at U maryland. I see a few people have gone there for med school. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Umaryland
- Thread starter Tritz
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I am a student there so I can certainly tell you a lot about the residency program.
Resident and Program quality: I think that the residents are a selling point of the program. Most of the residents are very strong clinically, plus they are willing to help their colleagues out even when it's not their patient. I had a patient who needed an arthocentesis on his knee to evaluate for septic arthritis, and the resident who helped me do the procedure (it was my first time) wasn't my resident and I didn' t even know him, he just knew that I needed help. They are all pretty laid back too; I think that part of the reason for this is the atmosphere that the chairperson and PD create. I don't know if you've ever met our chairperson, but he is probably one of the nicest, most resident/student-friendly chairpersons in IM. I'm not being biased when I say that too, because residents from other schools have commented on how involved he is with resident education (he actually attends most morning reports), and he is really dedicated towards teaching and making himself available to students and to residents. He has this really nice 1 hr speech about how much he cares about residents that he gives when students come to interview, it's a really well known speech on the interview trail too, people have talked to me about it at other schools and how it made them want to go to Maryland. Our chief's in past years have been OK to strong, and I know that one of the chief's that will be starting next year (as the primary care chief) is a really excellent teacher and really laid back which is a nice quality to have in a chief (I heard one chief at a different program say how he thought that the 80 hr work week was a horrible restriction for residents!) Lunch is provided most days by drug companies, but at least 1 day per week, there is no lunch, which is really annoying if you like to pack your lunch to have to buy supplies for 1-2 days per week.
Faculty: Like most programs, we have some excellent faculty and we also have some faculty who I and many of the residents don't particularly care for. I think that this is true with most programs though. I'd say that ~80% of our faculty are very resident/ student friendly and interested in teaching. Some of the fellows seem a bit overworked and not interested in teaching, but I guess that goes with any program too.
Fellowship Placement: almost all residents get into whatever specialty they want, most seem to get the program that they want too. We do very well in GI and in cards, I think that our numbers are something like 12/12 for cards and I don't know what our number was for GI last year, but it was high too.
Anyways, I would have ranked Maryland #1 on my rank list, but I didn't do so for a few reasons. The patient population makes some residents jaded, particularly in the ER. I've noticed that during my time in the ER, the residents are taught to practice very defensive medicine, and they start to think that everybody is drug abuser, but they give them all percocet's anyways for the pain that they can't figure out. To be honest, Baltimore city has an illicit (heroin or cocaine) drug abuse rate of 10% of the population or more, many of whom do come to universities malingering because they know we have young docs here that are more "gullible", so I guess that it's not that far of reach, but I do think that it's troubling during your training if you feel like you can't trust your patients (it probably leads to bad habits, IMO). There is a large population of non-compliant HIV/Hep C patients here, which I guess is one of the reasons that Maryland has such a top ID department (we have our own inpatient HIV service as a regular medicine team). It's also a pretty violent city, several of my classmates have been mugged at gunpoint in the surrounding neighborhood, one dental student was stabbed to death fairly recently close to campus, and residents have been assaulted and beaten up on the street close to campus too. I don't think that it's so dangerous that it should dissuade you from coming here out of fear or anything, I just think that it's something to factor into your decision. If you are cautious about it (ie avoiding certain streets late at night, living in a safe area), then you should be fine. I also had differences with some of the faculty and I got a vibe that the PD didn't particularly like me, so all of these factors caused me to rank them #2 on my rank list.
It's an excellent program though, and it has very nice facilties (we recently opened a new ER and new building that will have a new MICU in the next few years), it has a large and diversified patient population, and it has a very strong rep in IM nationally. I was surprised how large our hospital is compared to many others too, I was a little bit dissappointed on my interview trail because so many other "well respected" IM programs had such small hospitals and poor facilites when compared with Maryland. Anyways, I hope that answered all of your questions, I'd be happy to write more if you wanted to know anything else!
Resident and Program quality: I think that the residents are a selling point of the program. Most of the residents are very strong clinically, plus they are willing to help their colleagues out even when it's not their patient. I had a patient who needed an arthocentesis on his knee to evaluate for septic arthritis, and the resident who helped me do the procedure (it was my first time) wasn't my resident and I didn' t even know him, he just knew that I needed help. They are all pretty laid back too; I think that part of the reason for this is the atmosphere that the chairperson and PD create. I don't know if you've ever met our chairperson, but he is probably one of the nicest, most resident/student-friendly chairpersons in IM. I'm not being biased when I say that too, because residents from other schools have commented on how involved he is with resident education (he actually attends most morning reports), and he is really dedicated towards teaching and making himself available to students and to residents. He has this really nice 1 hr speech about how much he cares about residents that he gives when students come to interview, it's a really well known speech on the interview trail too, people have talked to me about it at other schools and how it made them want to go to Maryland. Our chief's in past years have been OK to strong, and I know that one of the chief's that will be starting next year (as the primary care chief) is a really excellent teacher and really laid back which is a nice quality to have in a chief (I heard one chief at a different program say how he thought that the 80 hr work week was a horrible restriction for residents!) Lunch is provided most days by drug companies, but at least 1 day per week, there is no lunch, which is really annoying if you like to pack your lunch to have to buy supplies for 1-2 days per week.
Faculty: Like most programs, we have some excellent faculty and we also have some faculty who I and many of the residents don't particularly care for. I think that this is true with most programs though. I'd say that ~80% of our faculty are very resident/ student friendly and interested in teaching. Some of the fellows seem a bit overworked and not interested in teaching, but I guess that goes with any program too.
Fellowship Placement: almost all residents get into whatever specialty they want, most seem to get the program that they want too. We do very well in GI and in cards, I think that our numbers are something like 12/12 for cards and I don't know what our number was for GI last year, but it was high too.
Anyways, I would have ranked Maryland #1 on my rank list, but I didn't do so for a few reasons. The patient population makes some residents jaded, particularly in the ER. I've noticed that during my time in the ER, the residents are taught to practice very defensive medicine, and they start to think that everybody is drug abuser, but they give them all percocet's anyways for the pain that they can't figure out. To be honest, Baltimore city has an illicit (heroin or cocaine) drug abuse rate of 10% of the population or more, many of whom do come to universities malingering because they know we have young docs here that are more "gullible", so I guess that it's not that far of reach, but I do think that it's troubling during your training if you feel like you can't trust your patients (it probably leads to bad habits, IMO). There is a large population of non-compliant HIV/Hep C patients here, which I guess is one of the reasons that Maryland has such a top ID department (we have our own inpatient HIV service as a regular medicine team). It's also a pretty violent city, several of my classmates have been mugged at gunpoint in the surrounding neighborhood, one dental student was stabbed to death fairly recently close to campus, and residents have been assaulted and beaten up on the street close to campus too. I don't think that it's so dangerous that it should dissuade you from coming here out of fear or anything, I just think that it's something to factor into your decision. If you are cautious about it (ie avoiding certain streets late at night, living in a safe area), then you should be fine. I also had differences with some of the faculty and I got a vibe that the PD didn't particularly like me, so all of these factors caused me to rank them #2 on my rank list.
It's an excellent program though, and it has very nice facilties (we recently opened a new ER and new building that will have a new MICU in the next few years), it has a large and diversified patient population, and it has a very strong rep in IM nationally. I was surprised how large our hospital is compared to many others too, I was a little bit dissappointed on my interview trail because so many other "well respected" IM programs had such small hospitals and poor facilites when compared with Maryland. Anyways, I hope that answered all of your questions, I'd be happy to write more if you wanted to know anything else!