Univ Buffalo Residency Program

[gentamycin10]

Beware before making your rank list. This program is officially on probation.

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[PageDrT]

European MS1 here, can you explain what you mean by probation? What happened?

 

[gentamycin10]

Interviewed there last week. I spoke to one of the CA2 residents afterwards. I was told only 3/12 of their residents passed their basic exam. Also residents spoke to a lack of teaching at a number of the sites. Resident told me they do not expect the program to be around after this year and that residents may have to transfer to a hospital near the Canadian border.

 

[PageDrT]

Wow that’s definitely not a good thing.

 

[AdmiralChz]

Beware before making your rank list. This program is officially on probation.

Not by ACGME, their site visit is scheduled for next month. Currently had full accreditation per the ACGME site:

ACGME - Accreditation Data System (ADS)

Beware of postings by a person who created an account to trash a program.

 

[deleted171991]

Interviewed there last week. I spoke to one of the CA2 residents afterwards. I was told only 3/12 of their residents passed their basic exam. Also residents spoke to a lack of teaching at a number of the sites. Resident told me they do not expect the program to be around after this year and that residents may have to transfer to a hospital near the Canadian border.

A 75% failure rate speaks more about the quality of the residents, not necessarily the program.

This is the future of anesthesiology; all the losers who can't make it into better specialties will apply for anesthesiology to escape family practice.

My "inflation-adjusted" USMLE scores from 10-15 years ago would be North of 260 today. It pains me to see people with scores of 210-220 today even considering an anesthesiology residency.

 

[Iso4ane]

A 75% failure rate speaks more about the quality of the residents, not necessarily the program.

This is the future of anesthesiology; all the losers who can't make it into better specialties will apply for anesthesiology to escape family practice.

I do not disagree with either statement, and if we truely believe in patient advocacy, we need to keep resident standards high all around. We all know how quickly a situation can deteriorate in an OR. Would you want these people taking care of you or your family members?

 

[Reveler]

Interviewed there last week. I spoke to one of the CA2 residents afterwards. I was told only 3/12 of their residents passed their basic exam. Also residents spoke to a lack of teaching at a number of the sites. Resident told me they do not expect the program to be around after this year and that residents may have to transfer to a hospital near the Canadian border.

U of B doesn't expect the program to be around after this year or the residents don't expect it to? I know they were having problems with pass rate but didn't know how this would translate to probation/accreditation status.

 

[chocomorsel]

A 75% failure rate speaks more about the quality of the residents, not necessarily the program.

This is the future of anesthesiology; all the losers who can't make it into better specialties will apply for anesthesiology to escape family practice.

My "inflation-adjusted" USMLE scores from 10-15 years ago would be North of 260 today. It pains me to see people with scores of 210-220 today even considering an anesthesiology residency.

How does one calculate "inflation adjusted" USMLE scores FFP?

 

[deleted171991]

How does one calculate "inflation adjusted" USMLE scores FFP?

This one looked at the almost 20 point-increase in the minimum passing score (at least for Step 1), and at the frequency of certain high scores. For example, 15 years ago, a 260 was a superstar. A white crow. Today, one keeps hearing about 260 scores (at least on Step 2), at about the same frequency as 240s back then. The average is at least 10 points higher, for both steps.

They should have not removed the two-digit scores. Those were "inflation-adjusted", because 75 was by definition the passing score, and 99 was always the creme de la creme.

Of course, I may be wrong...

 

[parcus]

How does one calculate "inflation adjusted" USMLE scores FFP?

Quite simple, you just need the old data (mean and standard deviation). A person at the 90 percentile score back in 2008 got 250, in 2016 he would get 255. Can't find older data, but if you just look at the mean you will not do a very accurate comparison.

 

[deleted171991]

Quite simple, you just need the old data (mean and standard deviation). A person at the 90 percentile score back in 2008 got 250, in 2016 he would get 255. Can't find older data, but if you just look at the mean you will not do a very accurate comparison.

I found some better data. https://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/handbook/pdf/usmle2-00.pdf

So let's take Step 1 in 2002. That was 216 (24). (The first number is the mean, the second the SD.) Same Step 1 in 2016: 228 (21).

Step 2 CK in 2002: 216 (23). In 2016: 242 (17). Can you all see the huge difference here? That's also why the minimum passing score was raised almost 20 points, to 209.

So I would say that most scores are about 10 points higher on Step 1 and 20 points higher on Step 2 CK, compared to the people who took the exams 14-15 years ago. So a 220 Step 1/230 Step 2 getting into anesthesiology residency today should be a sad thing.

 

[nimbus]

The rise in scores probably has something to do with the ubiquitous online test prep resources that are now available. Generally the more practice tests one does, the higher your score. I know SAT scores have similarly risen.

 

[racerx]

This is very curious. Look closely at the OP's name, then go to the SUNY Upstate Anesthesiology website and look at some names. Not sure what is going on, but I feel like there are some shenanigans.

 

[acidbase1]

A 75% failure rate speaks more about the quality of the residents, not necessarily the program.

This is the future of anesthesiology; all the losers who can't make it into better specialties will apply for anesthesiology to escape family practice.

My "inflation-adjusted" USMLE scores from 10-15 years ago would be North of 260 today. It pains me to see people with scores of 210-220 today even considering an anesthesiology residency.

That’s what jumped out to me. You have to try to fail the basic. I think the pass rate is close to 90%

 

[MedAnes2017]

This is very curious. Look closely at the OP's name, then go to the SUNY Upstate Anesthesiology website and look at some names. Not sure what is going on, but I feel like there are some shenanigans.

Wow, good attention to details! Dr. Carlos Lopez was a program director at Upstate when I interviewed there last year... just saying. Obviously, I doubt a PD would even have time to do something like this, but definitely something shady going on here.