Yeah, sorry about the website...and FRIEDA. There's not much there for outsiders to see. But the program is a good one. They have a children's hospital that is a part of the main UK hospital. Currently most of the 4th floor is devoted to peds. There's a 50-60 bed NICU (level 3), a 12 bed PICU, and a ward floor with approx. 75-90 beds I would say. (I don't know the exact number) There are 2 ward teams that cover the peds cases on the floor. There is an attending for each team that covers general peds and all the subspecialty patients are seen by whichever attending is on for that specialty and communicated with that team. There are 7 categorical peds, 2 triple board, and 6 med/peds residents per year.
I would say the main strengths of the program is the laid-back, collegial atmosphere...almost every peds attending is extremely approachable and don't mind getting a call from the intern who has a question about a patient, and most will take time to explain things to you. Another strength is the growth in the program...approx. 17 peds faculty have been hired in the last 2-3 years as the hospital grows. Overall the hospital has increased total discharges by 5,000 in the last 2 years! Let's say that there's no shortage of work. They are building a new hospital that is scheduled to be completed in 2010. At that time there will be a dedicated peds ER. Currently, residents complete one month in the UK ER and spend one month as a senior at the Peds ER in Cincinnati. Another big plus is the diversity of exposures culturally and medically. Lexington is the major referral center for most of eastern KY. There's some interesting folk out there. If you like genetics...well...you'll see some stuff to be sure. There's a growing hispanic population here (for real) I've used my spanish frequently, a small african-american population and smatterings of middle eastern, japanese populations more associated with the university.
Lexington is about 250K people and there is plenty to do when you have a free moment. It's only about an hour to 1.5 hours to both Cincinnati and Louisville if you want to check out some concerts that hit there instead of stopping here, although we do get some that come here.
Call is q4 on the wards, NICU. There is a night float that covers deliveries, hem/onc, peds neuro, ER consults, and mommy call (telephone consults). The PICU has each resident that spends a week covering nights. Both wards and NICU are overnight call. The call rooms have tempur-pedic mattresses in them so they're nice when you do get a second to lay your head down. Otherwise, for scheduling, all 4 days off are typically on non-call days on the weekend, which with a q4 call months means you will have one golden weekend with both sat./sun. off.
They're compliant with work hours (there's usually a little trouble in July getting the kinks worked out with new folk) but that's the only month where there might be issues, otherwise I would say that there is full compliance and it is stressed that you need to be leaving by the time your time is up.
A lot of medical students from UK apply to the program and want to stay because they enjoy it. Sometimes I feel they don't get as many from outside because there isn't as much info out there about the program, so I don't mind taking a moment to post about it. I post on here regularly but switched my name to protect the anonymity of my other screen name. If you have any other questions, I can try to answer them as best as I can. If you go to the UK Med/Peds website, there's some more infomation about the peds side of things, since there's not much on the peds website. Hopefully we will get that changed...it is something we've brought up at our resident meetings.
