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hyperemesis

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Just interviewed at UW on their last interview day. Not sure if it's toward the end of the trail or what, but I only saw two residents at the pre-interview dinner and the lunch. They were the same two residents. 🙄 Other places I had been to always had at least five or more residents (at Dartmouth, there were a dozen for the three applicants that day). I'm wondering if other people also had the same experience and if so, think that this is a red flag that UW is hiding something.

Are the residents overworked? Their website said the avg work hours are between 50-55, but reading between the lines of what the chief res said, this definitely does not seem to be the case.

What are other people's thoughts on UW?
 
hyperemesis said:
Just interviewed at UW on their last interview day. Not sure if it's toward the end of the trail or what, but I only saw two residents at the pre-interview dinner and the lunch. They were the same two residents. 🙄 Other places I had been to always had at least five or more residents (at Dartmouth, there were a dozen for the three applicants that day). I'm wondering if other people also had the same experience and if so, think that this is a red flag that UW is hiding something.

Are the residents overworked? Their website said the avg work hours are between 50-55, but reading between the lines of what the chief res said, this definitely does not seem to be the case.

What are other people's thoughts on UW?
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Not sure what happened here, but there were plenty of residents/interns there when I went. I didn't get the impression they were overworked at all. In fact, the residents showed us their hours logs and it averaged out to be around 55 hrs/week. On their website it says that the CBY work 54.5, CA1: 55.4, CA2: 55.9, CA3: 51.62...and the residents pretty much agreed with that.

Their call schedule sounds unique too - basically they bunch up your calls into 1 week of night float where you do 4 straight calls and then have the rest of the week free. It was semi-complex but sounded like as a CA1 you don't even stay overnight. The chief told us that the total duty hours during these 4 days averaged out to only 30-40 hrs that week which sounds pretty sweet.
 
hyperemesis said:
Just interviewed at UW on their last interview day. Not sure if it's toward the end of the trail or what, but I only saw two residents at the pre-interview dinner and the lunch. They were the same two residents. 🙄 Other places I had been to always had at least five or more residents (at Dartmouth, there were a dozen for the three applicants that day). I'm wondering if other people also had the same experience and if so, think that this is a red flag that UW is hiding something.

Are the residents overworked? Their website said the avg work hours are between 50-55, but reading between the lines of what the chief res said, this definitely does not seem to be the case.

What are other people's thoughts on UW?
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i think you're reading too much in b/wn the lines. i'm at UW, and we definitely don't work more than 50-55 hrs on OR months. at the interview dinners i attended, the chiefs were pretty clear about that.

it may be that it's late in the interview season, and/or people would rather spend time w/ their families than with applicants. we tend to have a lot of people who are married and/or with children.
 
UW only does 9,600 surgeries a year which is slim, add on to that there class size of 28 and I'd be more worried about not getting cases. I want exposure to complexity and challenge, I don't mind working hard if I can leverage the work time spent by the experience and education gained since after residency I want to be able not to just practice independently but to practice confidently.
 
Josh1 said:
UW only does 9,600 surgeries a year which is slim, add on to that there class size of 28 and I'd be more worried about not getting cases. I want exposure to complexity and challenge, I don't mind working hard if I can leverage the work time spent by the experience and education gained since after residency I want to be able not to just practice independently but to practice confidently.
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i dont know. there could be a difference between the number of cases and the complexity of cases. UW is a referral for 5 different states which means they probably get the weird, complex, complicated cases. plus being in ranking of top hospitals, complexity is probably even worse (in a good way). i dont know about basing everything just on numbers. how would UW get 5 year accreditations if their residents werent getting exposure?
 
Don't know where you got that number, but are you adding together the UW hospital, Harborview, the childrens hospital, and the VA? I think the total is definitely higher.

Josh1 said:
UW only does 9,600 surgeries a year which is slim, add on to that there class size of 28 and I'd be more worried about not getting cases. I want exposure to complexity and challenge, I don't mind working hard if I can leverage the work time spent by the experience and education gained since after residency I want to be able not to just practice independently but to practice confidently.
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No I didn't add all of the hospitals up, I just looked for the highest number since that is usually the one residents do a lot of their work at and is a good indicator of the volume (most programs have 2-5 'affiliated' hospitals that residents rotate through while spending the large majority at the main hospital).

Those numbers come from UW GME survey submitted 5 months ago, it's also on FREIDA.

Compare Utah's program which is average and without the 'name' of University of Washington: they do the same number of surgeries ~9,600, have 100 more beds in their hospital but their class size is 13 compared to UW's 28! Essentially at Utah they get twice the number of selection/cases. And Utah has one pain fellowship vs. UW's pain/CT/CCM/peds/Obstetric/Neuroanes/Regional/Trauma fellowships (which should realistically add about 2-3 classmates on to your total year size since those people will take the cases in their respective fields)

@kenazi:You get a 5 year accreditation by not making mistakes, you don't get extra accreditation by exposing your residents to more, complex cases, you get accredited by not screwing up and making sure everyone meets the numbers and no faults happen. This does not correlate with volume or resident comfort level with handling cases. Mass Gen's surgery program got put on probation a few times, is this because of the poor training?

I base a lot of things on numbers. Seeing a low volume of complicated cases pales in comparison to seeing a high volume of average complex cases. The volume makes you proficient and a master, if a complex case comes around you will know how to handle it calmly. That and at big name programs the fellows will be doing those cases anyway.
 
Josh1 said:
No I didn't add all of the hospitals up, I just looked for the highest number since that is usually the one residents do a lot of their work at and is a good indicator of the volume (most programs have 2-5 'affiliated' hospitals that residents rotate through while spending the large majority at the main hospital).

Those numbers come from UW GME survey submitted 5 months ago, it's also on FREIDA.

Compare Utah's program which is average and without the 'name' of University of Washington: they do the same number of surgeries ~9,600, have 100 more beds in their hospital but their class size is 13 compared to UW's 28! Essentially at Utah they get twice the number of selection/cases. And Utah has one pain fellowship vs. UW's pain/CT/CCM/peds/Obstetric/Neuroanes/Regional/Trauma fellowships (which should realistically add about 2-3 classmates on to your total year size since those people will take the cases in their respective fields)

@kenazi:You get a 5 year accreditation by not making mistakes, you don't get extra accreditation by exposing your residents to more, complex cases, you get accredited by not screwing up and making sure everyone meets the numbers and no faults happen. This does not correlate with volume or resident comfort level with handling cases. Mass Gen's surgery program got put on probation a few times, is this because of the poor training?

I base a lot of things on numbers. Seeing a low volume of complicated cases pales in comparison to seeing a high volume of average complex cases. The volume makes you proficient and a master, if a complex case comes around you will know how to handle it calmly. That and at big name programs the fellows will be doing those cases anyway.
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No offense, but you really don't know what the hell you are talking about. You split your time at UW between the four hospitals probably 40% at Harborview, 40% at UWMC, 10% at the VA, 10% at Childrens. So if you are just looking at the number of cases (already a pretty stupid way to compare programs) at UWMC, you are looking at the number of cases that are done at the place you spend less than half your time at.

This: "UW's pain/CT/CCM/peds/Obstetric/Neuroanes/Regional/Trauma fellowships (which should realistically add about 2-3 classmates on to your total year size since those people will take the cases in their respective fields)" is just a ridiculous statement.

Pain fellows are in the chronic pain clinic doing procedures that residents don't normally do.

CCM fellows are acting as fellows in the ICU (medical, surgical, etc), something residents never do.

There are no trauma fellows. There are no OB fellows (I believe).

Regional fellows are there to teach blocks to the residents mainly and hone their own craft. An asset, not a detriment.

Now as far as the peds/CT fellows, you could make an argument they take cases from residents, but the same could be said at every major program in the country. There is more than enough to go around here.
 
@okayplayer

1. Since your program didn't seem to communicate this, here is a list of fellowships that occur at your training program
http://depts.washington.edu/anesth/education/fellows/ct.shtml


2. "Pain fellows are in the chronic pain clinic doing procedures that residents don't normally do. CCM fellows are acting as fellows in the ICU (medical, surgical, etc), something residents never do."

I agree that some residents at some places are not trained or given experience in these things. You may not have met them because they were in training, if they weren't there someone else would be doing it, most likely a resident so he'd have the skill.

3. "Regional fellows are there to teach blocks to the residents mainly and hone their own craft. An asset, not a detriment." Ok, if you say so, I just want experience in residency, not experience watching someone else hone their craft.


3. "Now as far as the peds/CT fellows, you could make an argument they take cases from residents, but the same could be said at every major program in the country."

Not at ones without these fellows.


4. I just looked at the highest number done at all the affiliated hospitals of one institiution, this to me is a good indicator of volume. Might there be a program with 100 different hospitals with 1000 annual surgeries, no, probably not; and even if there were I can only be at one hospital at one time.
 
You're right. I'd exclude any program with fellowships from your rank list. Hopefully you're not interested in UCSF, BWH, MGH, Stanford, etc etc.

Use whatever criteria you like to pick a program. It's your choice. For the record, I thought Utah's program was outstanding.
 
Josh1 said:
UW only does 9,600 surgeries a year which is slim, add on to that there class size of 28 and I'd be more worried about not getting cases. I want exposure to complexity and challenge, I don't mind working hard if I can leverage the work time spent by the experience and education gained since after residency I want to be able not to just practice independently but to practice confidently.
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Okay, I have to put the beatdown on the misinformation here. If you go to UW for residency you will get to do plenty of cases, no question. The split mentioned earlier is pretty accurate, UWMC 40%, HMC 40%, Seattle Children's 10%, VA 10%. Plus a few elective/possible rotation sites. You will walk away from UW being able to handle anything very comfortably. Its a great case mix with great volume.

UW is the zebra barn. Referral center for the region. Transplant (kidney, liver, heart lung), hearts, etc.

HMC the only level one trauma center for 1/4 of the US land mass, (WA, ID, MT, AK) Also, big neurovascular referral center. You'll do so much complex neurovascular that it becomes second hand by the time you leave residency.

As far as fellows, they don't detract from the residents. Many of the fellows are non-acgme fellows, so they work as your staff. The only acgme fellows around have been discussed, pain, doing their own thing, CT fellows don't primary cases, they work more as your junior staff, CCM not really a concern for residents. Peds, Seattle Children's gets so much volume this really isn't an issue.


I really liked Utah too when I interviewed.
 
I am matching into anesthesiology this year, and I can gladly say that I will be ranking the University of Washington Anesthesiology program #1. I interviewed at most of the top programs in the country: west coast, midwest, and east coast. I know that I could be happy at many of them, but I am 100% confident in my decision to rank UW #1.

My top priority has been case complexity. UW residents do a ton of liver transplant and cardiac cases. Obviously heart and lung transplants are the luck of the draw, but it is not unheard of to do 5 hearts and 5 lungs on a 1-month specialty rotation. If you are interested in regional, you get all of the blocks you need at the UW hospitals, but you can also do a rotation at Virginia Mason! The ICU experience is outstanding, and the attendings are from all over the world.

Most importantly, I did a 4-week anesthesiology rotation at UW. The residents are wonderful and the relationship with the surgeons and ancillary staff is excellent. I was disappointed too because not many residents came to my interview dinner or lunch. But, I can tell you first hand that it is not because the UW has anything to hide! Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions.
 
I will also second or third the fact that there were plenty of residents at my dinner and interview day lunch while at UW.

I do have a question for the UWers though. I'm interested in CT, on the UW Anesthesia website they list the typical (avg) case numbers for a class and they are fine for everything but nowhere near as high as some other places i have interviewed at. To be fair in most cases its anecdotal from a resident or two saying "I have 300 epidurals or 200 blocks" etc.

On my interview day the chief showed his logs, he had 20 pump cases. Exactly 20. He wasn't doing CT so maybe he stopped logging at 20 or maybe he just didn't seek out anymore than the min but it begs the question, are there really plenty of hearts to do, esp pumps, with 28 residents and fellows?

it also appears as though (via the website) you do 1 month of CV as a CA-2 and then 1-2 as a CA-3. Is this accurate? (I have notes from my interview but want to hear more from sdn sources).

Overall UW impressed me, high on my list, but this has been a little bit of a cause for concern possibly hurting my ranking of the program.
 
Per4mer8 said:
I will also second or third the fact that there were plenty of residents at my dinner and interview day lunch while at UW.

I do have a question for the UWers though. I'm interested in CT, on the UW Anesthesia website they list the typical (avg) case numbers for a class and they are fine for everything but nowhere near as high as some other places i have interviewed at. To be fair in most cases its anecdotal from a resident or two saying "I have 300 epidurals or 200 blocks" etc.

On my interview day the chief showed his logs, he had 20 pump cases. Exactly 20. He wasn't doing CT so maybe he stopped logging at 20 or maybe he just didn't seek out anymore than the min but it begs the question, are there really plenty of hearts to do, esp pumps, with 28 residents and fellows?

it also appears as though (via the website) you do 1 month of CV as a CA-2 and then 1-2 as a CA-3. Is this accurate? (I have notes from my interview but want to hear more from sdn sources).

Overall UW impressed me, high on my list, but this has been a little bit of a cause for concern possibly hurting my ranking of the program.
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Heart numbers are probably accurate. Most residents can get the minimums in 2 months. Most who like cardiac do a third month, or do it if they are short. Numbers aren't super high, but I would say the acuity is generally pretty high. It won't be a bunch of chip shot AVRs and CABGs. Redos, multivalves, LVADS, transplant, etc are more common.

That being said my cardiac experience was adequate for me to be comfortable doing hearts in my current practice without fellowship training in CT. I will add in my current practice I have echo backup from cards and a CT trained partner, and our acuity is significantly lower, most of the time.
 
MTGas2B said:
Heart numbers are probably accurate. Most residents can get the minimums in 2 months. Most who like cardiac do a third month, or do it if they are short. Numbers aren't super high, but I would say the acuity is generally pretty high. It won't be a bunch of chip shot AVRs and CABGs. Redos, multivalves, LVADS, transplant, etc are more common.

That being said my cardiac experience was adequate for me to be comfortable doing hearts in my current practice without fellowship training in CT. I will add in my current practice I have echo backup from cards and a CT trained partner, and our acuity is significantly lower, most of the time.
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Thanks for the response. I figured the acuity and level of difficulty was high.

So obviously the last question is did you need a lightbox?
 
Where does UW list their numbers for procedures done on their website?

I wish every program were required to show these numbers
 
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The reputation out there is that UW is a malignant program.. I think that that reputation was justly deserved a number of years ago... Dr. Souter, I believe the residency chair, has made a lot of changes to justify shaking that reputation...

The experience, from what I hear is great... I had a buddy graduate a couple years back and didn't quite enjoyed his time. It isn't cush, but the training is awesome (and it is cush in some manners)...

- UW: major major referral center... Sure your case might be an inguinal hernia.. but the patient might have someone else's heart, and is awaiting a liver or have some crazy pathology.....

- Harborview: from what I understand crazy trauma center. Mostly blunt...

- Seattle Kid's: again major major referral center... some normal kids but a lot of zebras....

The area doesn't compete for too many patients.. it's the place to be (though I heard rumors that Swedish was going to start doing liver txps).

From what I understand, also, the call schedule is pretty nice. I'm not sure if it was the same but rare 24 hour shifts in the main OR. He seems to have harder call nights (longer hours) in private practice....

And that's the thing to understand.. I think most people still work pretty hard in PP. My gig is great, but I'm still clocking in 50-55 hours a week... Anesthesiology is a lifestyle choice in that you don't carry a pager too often, but it's not a like optho-holiday or radio-holiday...

drccw
 
I would agree that Dr. Souter's made a lot of improvements. W/o her, i don't know what the program would be like.

Would also agree with your assessment of the hospitals, with the addition that the VA is actually a great place to get CT, regional and ICU time.

Finally, the Swedish rumors have been swirling for at least 5 years, but so far UW is still the only one who's doing them. I'm guessing it takes a lot to get a liver transplant service going, and Swedish is facing some money troubles of their own.
 
Can anyone comment on what kind of stats it would take for a DO to get an interview here? How easy is it to secure an away rotation spot? Would that help at this program vs a much smaller program like Virginia Mason?

Thanks
 
midazme said:
I would agree that Dr. Souter's made a lot of improvements. W/o her, i don't know what the program would be like.

Would also agree with your assessment of the hospitals, with the addition that the VA is actually a great place to get CT, regional and ICU time.

Finally, the Swedish rumors have been swirling for at least 5 years, but so far UW is still the only one who's doing them. I'm guessing it takes a lot to get a liver transplant service going, and Swedish is facing some money troubles of their own.
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What can you say about the hours listed in this thread? On average.
 
TeamZissou said:
Can anyone comment on what kind of stats it would take for a DO to get an interview here? How easy is it to secure an away rotation spot? Would that help at this program vs a much smaller program like Virginia Mason?

Thanks
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DO who interviewed there....Not sure, but maybe the only reason i got an interview was because i rotated there. Interview offer came pretty late. I think Ive already posted my scores for advice in the past so I dont mind sharing. 237/253, 646/647ish. People I met there are pretty awesome and brilliant. People I met while interviewing there seemed to be looking at mainly higher tier programs (unlike myself), so I would guess its pretty competitive. If you want to go there set up a rotation. Even if you dont get an interview you will have a great month and learn a ton.
 
bkell101 said:
DO who interviewed there....Not sure, but maybe the only reason i got an interview was because i rotated there. Interview offer came pretty late. I think Ive already posted my scores for advice in the past so I dont mind sharing. 237/253, 646/647ish. People I met there are pretty awesome and brilliant. People I met while interviewing there seemed to be looking at mainly higher tier programs (unlike myself), so I would guess its pretty competitive. If you want to go there set up a rotation. Even if you dont get an interview you will have a great month and learn a ton.
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Oh also apply super early to the rotation spot. I called in january and was on a wait list.
 
midazme said:
Finally, the Swedish rumors have been swirling for at least 5 years, but so far UW is still the only one who's doing them. I'm guessing it takes a lot to get a liver transplant service going, and Swedish is facing some money troubles of their own.
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The U of Washington sued Swedish to prevent them from performing liver transplant procedures, but they lost the lawsuit in 2008. Beginning in 2011, Swedish in Seattle now has an active liver transplant program. http://www.swedish.org/Services/Transplant-Program/Transplant-Services/Liver-Transplant

Rather than dissing Swedish, I think a more relevant concern should be that as of 2012, the majority of attendings at UW are not certified by the ABA. This includes the program director and the entire liver transplant team. Easily verified using theABA.com website. If your plan is to practice anesthesiology in the states and sit for ABA certification, consider getting your training from ABA certified anesthesiologists. Additionally, you should consider that UW is CRNA friendly. Peripheral nerve blocks are shared equally with CRNAs. 6 out of the 25+ CA3 residents will go to VM for a couple of months, and CRNAs do not perform blocks at VM. Sure, you'll get many, many cases at UW, but when you graduate, what exactly will distinguish you from the CRNAs working there? I'm not trying to start a pissing war with UW, just list my concerns about the program.
 
Rather than dissing Swedish, I think a more relevant concern should be that as of 2012, the majority of attendings at UW are not certified by the ABA. This includes the program director and the entire liver transplant team. Easily verified using theABA.com website. If your plan is to practice anesthesiology in the states and sit for ABA certification, consider getting your training from ABA certified anesthesiologists. Additionally, you should consider that UW is CRNA friendly. Peripheral nerve blocks are shared equally with CRNAs. 6 out of the 25+ CA3 residents will go to VM for a couple of months, and CRNAs do not perform blocks at VM. Sure, you'll get many, many cases at UW, but when you graduate, what exactly will distinguish you from the CRNAs working there? I'm not trying to start a pissing war with UW, just list my concerns about the program.[/QUOTE]

Dude...not cool.
 
Don't know much about UW per se, but my guess is that the majority of their non-ABA certified attendings completed their residencies outside the U.S. (Canada, U.K., Israel, etc) - in my mind *not* a valid reason to avoid a residency program.

There are some phenomenal programs with a strong cohort of internationally trained faculty that are not eligible for ABA certification - Stanford comes to mind. In fact I would argue that Stanford has one of the most cutting edge and impressive resident education programs in the country. Some of these international folks are among the best teachers at their respective programs, plus they bring different practice styles and perspectives.
 
NPOpMN said:
The U of Washington sued Swedish to prevent them from performing liver transplant procedures, but they lost the lawsuit in 2008. Beginning in 2011, Swedish in Seattle now has an active liver transplant program. http://www.swedish.org/Services/Transplant-Program/Transplant-Services/Liver-Transplant

Rather than dissing Swedish, I think a more relevant concern should be that as of 2012, the majority of attendings at UW are not certified by the ABA. This includes the program director and the entire liver transplant team. Easily verified using theABA.com website. If your plan is to practice anesthesiology in the states and sit for ABA certification, consider getting your training from ABA certified anesthesiologists. Additionally, you should consider that UW is CRNA friendly. Peripheral nerve blocks are shared equally with CRNAs. 6 out of the 25+ CA3 residents will go to VM for a couple of months, and CRNAs do not perform blocks at VM. Sure, you'll get many, many cases at UW, but when you graduate, what exactly will distinguish you from the CRNAs working there? I'm not trying to start a pissing war with UW, just list my concerns about the program.
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<yawn>

Not sure you can start a pissing war on issues that UW has already been upfront about towards its applicants. 🙄

Since it's only your third post, I wasn't sure what your angle was. A quick look at your other two posts seem to indicate that you have a (unreasonable) concern about ABA certification for attendings, as well as one for CRNAs doing PNBs at UW. Frankly, you're beginning to sound like a concern troll, or a broken record.

Equating exclusivity in PNB to a top notch program is a naive mistake. There are a lot of things other than PNBs that distinguish UW residents from the CRNAs, including:
- lots of ICU months with some top notch ICU attendings
- intra-op and simulation teaching on TEE
- excellent cardiac anesthesia training
- fellowship opportunities (ACGME and non-ACGME)
- access and support for research
- perioperative training in the truest sense of the word
- access to high acuity cases on a daily basis

With all the concern for ABA trained attendings, the UW board pass rate is still > 95% for the past several years. We also have several attendings who are oral board examiners. So I don't know what your concern is there, maybe you could explain that? 😕

Finally, one of the major strengths of UW is that we do send a few residents outside of the system, but everyone graduates with more than enough numbers of all cases. Oh, AND we host residents from other programs so that they can get their trauma, burns and ICU numbers. If your concerns were legit, I think we wouldn't have another 5 year accrediation cycle, nor would we have such a high board pass rate, nor would we be the host site for other programs.

And yes, our OR work hours are less than 55/wk.
 
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Current UW resident and here's my 2 cents:

1) Hours- I think the quoted hours on the website are pretty accurate. Harborview is always very reasonable and you will almost always be relieved at or before 5pm (I left at 10am a couple of weeks ago). At UWMC, with the way the new schedule is, you do a block of nights and get a bunch of extra days off. Because of this when you actually work during the week you will work hard and rarely leave before 5, but you don't really take too much other call and it ends up evening out to pretty reasonable hours (If you catch me on a week I'm doing days in the main OR I might be pretty grumpy, but the 4-5 day weekends created by the call schedule make up for it).

2) Cases- UWMC is definitely a zebra farm. Patients don't get referred there unless something ain't right. Very few ASA 1 patients. Pretty diverse variety of cases. At Harborview,more neuro, big spine, and trauma than you could ever need. The big area in the program where the volume might not be that high is cardiac, but as mentioned above, much of the cardiac cases are not your straightforward stuff. There is also a relatively high volume of non cardiac thoracic cases.

As far as case numbers in response to Josh1, I guarantee you there is no shortage of cases. The 9600 number is bogus and as mentioned is an old number accounting for one hospital in the system. On a given day, we have so many cases, that CRNAs probably perform more anesthetics than residents (which is a good thing otherwise we would be slaves and have to stool sit in 12 hour cases with minimal learning potential).

3) Attendings- I think the international attendings are a strength of the program. Most of these people were studs in their home countries and were specifically recruited to UW for that reason( Unlike my med school which had some good attendings, but way too many bottom feeders who couldn't survive the outside world). Pretty much all certified by their home country's anesthesia boards which is what the FRCA and FANZCA after their names. Also, there might be a few that are quirky and more difficult to work with, but all have your back and want to see you succeed.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my training so far at UW. It has some problems (the administration is very receptive to complaints and changes are made), but you are lying to yourself if you think there is a perfect program out there.
 
I just finished at UW, and I am currently a fellow at Swedish in Seattle. Obviously, like any training program there's fantastic, good, not so good, and some unpleasantness at both facilities. Sure, UW has probably more attendings with restricted licenses than most programs, but assuming they are interested in teaching, I don't know that's a bad thing. I easily passed the written ABA exam, and I genuinely don't believe I'll have any difficulty passing the orals. Well, that's assuming that I practice mock exams. I'm happy to answer any specific questions about my time at UW if you want to contact me by personal message. Good luck with the ranks lists, it's a roll of the dice whether it works out for you.
 
A few points from a former resident.

1. To the original poster -- I'm surprised to hear about your pre-interview dinner experience. In previous years, at least while I was in the program, we had 5-10 residents each dinner, including spouses/significant others.

2. Case numbers that you listed are for the UW only. We spent approx 40% of our time at the university hospital (UW), the rest is at HArborview (only level I trauma center for 5 states), Seattle Childrens, VA, as well as a small optional portion at local private practice hospitals as an away elective. We certainly have enough numbers to meet the minimum, but our numbers are of much higher acuity. Eg. My friends that graduated from other programs count a fall off a ladder with an ankle fracture as "trauma". What I counted as "trauma" during residency was multiple gunshots to the chest resulting in open cardiac massage in the ED that comes crashing to the OR minutes later. As others have said there are lots of complex cases such as liver transplants (I personally did 8 start to end), I did 6-7 lung transplants, a heart transplant, and some cases involving circ arrest and LVAD placement. Definitely far from "routine" pump cases.

3. As for CRNAs doing blocks, yes they do place blocks and catheters, but there are plenty to go around. If it got to a point where there was not enough for the residency training program, our PD would put a stop to CRNAs taking procedures, but currently it's not at that point. I placed approx 80 nerve catheters in one month while rotating through the acute pain service.

4. You work hard, but not as hard as some other programs. There is ample time for reading and research. During OR rotations, usually 50-55hrs/week. There is a new night float system in place now to cover overnight at the major hospitals. I'm not sure how that has affected duty hours, but I'm sure the average is still in the low 50s.

5. Thats all I can think of now. If anyone has questions from a recent grad, please PM me..
 
Does anyone have a list of where UW grads go for fellowships/jobs in recent years? Want to make sure that if I go to UW for residency, that I'm not limited to the Pacific NW for life. Thanks.
 
gtb said:
I just finished at UW, and I am currently a fellow at Swedish in Seattle. Obviously, like any training program there's fantastic, good, not so good, and some unpleasantness at both facilities. Sure, UW has probably more attendings with restricted licenses than most programs, but assuming they are interested in teaching, I don't know that's a bad thing. I easily passed the written ABA exam, and I genuinely don't believe I'll have any difficulty passing the orals. Well, that's assuming that I practice mock exams. I'm happy to answer any specific questions about my time at UW if you want to contact me by personal message. Good luck with the ranks lists, it's a roll of the dice whether it works out for you.
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I didn't realize that Swedish had fellows.. unless Art Lam is up to his old tricks...

drccw
 
Went2Jared said:
Does anyone have a list of where UW grads go for fellowships/jobs in recent years? Want to make sure that if I go to UW for residency, that I'm not limited to the Pacific NW for life. Thanks.
Click to expand...

That's probably not the best question to ask. The only way your choice of residency would limit your fellowship choices would be if the residency program were widely perceived to be of low quality. And UW is clearly above that level. It is hard to imagine a fellowship director thinking "Well, UW puts out good residents for the PacNW, but they don't work out so well here in Florida."

A better question would be to ask where you might want to do your fellowship, then look at where recent fellows in that program did their residencies. A fellowship program could well be interested in primarily in its own department's residents. So if you want to end up in a particular geographic area, and the fellowships there seem to recruit internally, then yeah, maybe you should give more thought to those residency programs.
 
Went2Jared said:
Does anyone have a list of where UW grads go for fellowships/jobs in recent years? Want to make sure that if I go to UW for residency, that I'm not limited to the Pacific NW for life. Thanks.
Click to expand...

my buddy who trained at UW found an awesome job doing exactly what he wants on the east coast.

drccw
 
MTGas2B said:
Now folks have to decide, which neuro fellowship to chose in Seattle, decisions, decisions.
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Well, . . . , maybe not so complicated a choice. One program has Art Lam, the other doesn't 🙂
 
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Hi, I was wondering if any of the current residents/interns could comment on the intern year experience at UW? For some reason I didn't take any notes on this at my interview. Just wondering about overall experience - learning environment, work hrs, etc
 
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