I had heard that the faculty was not as involved as in the past, wasn't as much teaching and a larger # of residents were not passing boards/scoring lower than previous years. I haven't found anything on the net to suggest this, it has just been passed to me word of mouth.
You have to keep in mind that board scores and pass rates will naturally vary from year to year, which can give the impression a program isn't doing as well as previously. Having said that I think that this is likely the case here as well, since I have had very good teaching both on rounds and in more structured mini-lectures on almost all of my medicine rotations.
There is a lot of reading expected outside of work hours, and some of the more senior residents had a hard time adapting to that, but it's getting better. We have required reading baserd on specific rotations, and some rotations even have a test that is offered at the end of the rotation to evaluate how well the information was learned, and if changes to format need to be made. I like to read based on the specific rotation (i.e. cardiology, renal, critical care, etc.) and tend to retain the info better than if we just had a bunch of chapters to read that had nothing to do with what I was doing that month.
As for faculty involvement, there are one or two faculty members who do not like to teach outside their realm of subspecialty. An example is that there are ID attendings who also act as hospital attendings for inpatient teams. This means they are responsible for general medicine as well as ID, and some do not feel comfortable talking about topics such as acid-base disturbances for excample. They are all very involved, and very interested in our learning. I have not yet come across one who did not have enthusiasm for teaching what they are comfortable teaching.
With the caliber of 3rd year IM residents and 4th year med-peds residents who will be taking boards next year I expect there will be an increase in scores and pass rates. It's a top notch program and I am proud to be considered part of it (when I'm on an IM rotation that is).
