- Joined
- May 5, 2005
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- 1,338
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Pros: Memorial Hermann Hospital (main clinical site) has nearly every sub-specialty in-house (i.e. neuro, cardio-thoracic, peds, transplant, OB, regional, ICU, trauma, etc.) with the notable exception of a pain service. They hired away one of the faculty members from MD Anderson to start up the acute pain service and they are in the process of starting up a chronic pain rotation. We'll see what happens. Most of the ORs are state-of-the-art with new ventilators and monitors. Since the chair is well known airway expert, they have a variety of advanced airway gadgets that are at your disposal if you choose to use them.
They have a variety of clinical rotations at outside facilities just down the street in the Texas Medical Center, many of which are top-ten institutions themselves. You have the opportunity to go to Texas Children's Hospital for peds, Texas Heart Institute for C/V, Methodist Hospital for C/V, regional and C/V ICU, MD Anderson for thoracic and ICU. You also go to LBJ, a small county hospital that does bread and butter cases where you have the opportunity to moonlight for $80/hr. By the time you graduate from here, you will have seen a large variety of nearly every case under the sun and will be comfortable putting the sickest of the sick to sleep. You will also be well-trained for private practice.
Cons: I am referring to Memorial Hermann Hospital specifically, where you spend 85% of your time. The didactics here are horrible with almost little to no intraoperative teaching. Furthermore, the faculty here are not very well-read themselves, which makes the teaching a bit counterproductive considering what they are testing on the boards these days. The CA-3 class of 2008 had a 50% fail rate on their written boards. This place is definitely a workhorse program, and although there is a system where residents are assigned "late" days, almost everyone stays till around 6 or 7 PM. The work hours have dramatically increased since the new chair took over last year. Memorial Hermann, although listed as a non-profit institution, is a very profit-driven hospital, and you will be in the OR all night on call doing elective cases as well as traumas. There are nearly 40 ORs here with about 5 outside locations, so the daily operations can be extremely inefficient. Resident morale is pretty bad, especially for the senior residents who had paid their dues staying late as juniors only to have the relief system changed recently. Due to the recent changes, this program has a hard time retaining their own medical students, and it seems like they have been accepting more and more DOs and foreign grads in the upcoming classes. Compared to the other Houston program (Baylor), you will be better trained at UT. Baylor is definitely the more academic institution with better didactics, however, the volume of cases they have at their main clinical site pales in comparison to Memorial Hermann. In addition, Baylor residents have to spend months at outside institutions within the Med Center in order to satisfy their sub-specialty requirements.
Well I hope this helps.
They have a variety of clinical rotations at outside facilities just down the street in the Texas Medical Center, many of which are top-ten institutions themselves. You have the opportunity to go to Texas Children's Hospital for peds, Texas Heart Institute for C/V, Methodist Hospital for C/V, regional and C/V ICU, MD Anderson for thoracic and ICU. You also go to LBJ, a small county hospital that does bread and butter cases where you have the opportunity to moonlight for $80/hr. By the time you graduate from here, you will have seen a large variety of nearly every case under the sun and will be comfortable putting the sickest of the sick to sleep. You will also be well-trained for private practice.
Cons: I am referring to Memorial Hermann Hospital specifically, where you spend 85% of your time. The didactics here are horrible with almost little to no intraoperative teaching. Furthermore, the faculty here are not very well-read themselves, which makes the teaching a bit counterproductive considering what they are testing on the boards these days. The CA-3 class of 2008 had a 50% fail rate on their written boards. This place is definitely a workhorse program, and although there is a system where residents are assigned "late" days, almost everyone stays till around 6 or 7 PM. The work hours have dramatically increased since the new chair took over last year. Memorial Hermann, although listed as a non-profit institution, is a very profit-driven hospital, and you will be in the OR all night on call doing elective cases as well as traumas. There are nearly 40 ORs here with about 5 outside locations, so the daily operations can be extremely inefficient. Resident morale is pretty bad, especially for the senior residents who had paid their dues staying late as juniors only to have the relief system changed recently. Due to the recent changes, this program has a hard time retaining their own medical students, and it seems like they have been accepting more and more DOs and foreign grads in the upcoming classes. Compared to the other Houston program (Baylor), you will be better trained at UT. Baylor is definitely the more academic institution with better didactics, however, the volume of cases they have at their main clinical site pales in comparison to Memorial Hermann. In addition, Baylor residents have to spend months at outside institutions within the Med Center in order to satisfy their sub-specialty requirements.
Well I hope this helps.
