Pennsylvania Hospital is the oldest hospital in the country, founded by Benjamin Franklin. It was also the hospital that they took Rocky to in the beginning of Rocky 2.
But enough with the history. I applied there 2 years ago. It is a small program (2 residents per year, 5 attendings), and they are known as the soft tissue place. A lot of soft tissue specimens are sent there from outside hospitals. It used to be it's own stand alone hospital until about 10 years ago when they merged with UPenn. However, their in house residency programs remained untouched for the most part, while other UPenn residencies (like surgery) sent residents there for rotations. At the time that I interviewed, the path program remained seperate from Upenn's program with the exception of elective rotations being available for Pennsy residents at UPenn and vice versa. The also have a surgical fellowship and a bone/soft tissue fellowship.
I am currently at another program in Philly (Temple), and one of our graduates is now a surgical fellow there. She really likes it, but she did mention that the entire attending staff (including PD) is now different than when I interviewed there. I actually really liked the program and regret that I didn't go there. It was very low-key and everyone seemed happy and enjoyed their work. The reasons that I did not go there were:
1. They were only taking one resident that year, and I was hesistent to be the only newbie.
2. Having an interest in forensics, I was turned off by their low autopsy numbers. They get about 1/2 the yearly number as other hospitals in the area. In addition, the performed their autopsies at Einstein Hospital, which is about a 20 min subway ride / 30 min drive (with traffic). They also performed autopsies as part of a 4 surgical rotation (gross-frozens-autopsy-signout if I remember correctly). It didn't seem as appealing to me.
A lot of that may have changed with the new PD and attending staff, but that's what I remember off the top of my head.
