The program is still about the same in terms of work hours and environment. lazypanda's post is fairly accurate. The program has made a lot of recent changes in response to resident feedback/complaints, and the program continues to evolve which is a good thing in my opinion. Responding to past residents' input:
I trained at UTSW and those hours are wrong. I don't recall any single residency program at UTSW/Parkland that had those cush hours. Please see my original post in Yale vs UTSW vs UPMC. I averaged about 60 to 65 hours as a resident. A lot of rotations (especially CA1) are q4 which adds up to about 70 hour weeks. SICU was q3 and I did 3 of those as a resident. There are certain rotations where you are in the low 50s but they are rare. Acute and Chronic Pain have less hours.
Not sure where you got those hours but they are wrong and it is disturbing if the program is advertising those hours. The work is manageable as is. I listed some cons about the program mainly that there are malignant parts of the program, but no program is perfect. CRNA's do a decent job of relieving you on pre-call days but when you get to advanced rotations you don't have CRNA relief. And with the new hospitals opening up, I am not sure if case load for sub-specialty rotations such as Neuro or CV will increase.
There has been changes in faculty and leadership at UTSW and whether that is for better or worse remains to be seen.
SICU has gone away for us due to resident feedback about the nature of that rotation and breaking hours. Agree about the malignant parts of the program (a few bad eggs) but still happy to be training here. Volume has increased with the opening of NPH, but the work hours for the residents are probably still around 60-65 hrs/week, decreasing with seniority and certain rotations and increased for ICU rotations (never above 80). Hours aren't bad, but CA-1 year is still tough with the q4 24h call at Parkland. That being said, CA-1s get to see a lot and do a lot overnight. The big cases will usually go to CA-1s unless there are weaker/less confident faculty on call overnight (very rare). You quickly gain confidence, knowledge, and skill if being thrown into things is your style of learning. If your hand needs to be held throughout residency, this is definitely not the program for you.
To the OP. I trained at UTSW and graduated in 2013. Things may be different in the last two years with the new University Hospital. My CA-1 year I had 7 months of q4h in-house call at Parkland. Sounds like a lot. However, 5 of those months were main OR call and 2 were OB. OB call as a CA-1 was pretty easy given that during the day there were residents and CRNA that took turns doing C-sections. Usually people were milling about. During the night things could be busy or not. Some nights I slept 4-6 hours sometimes less. Main OR call as a CA-1 could be busy, however the call team consisted of a senior resident running the board and doing preops/getting consents and 4 stool monkeys (2 crna + 2 CA-1 or 3 crna +1 CA-1). By 7pm only 2 ORs were open all night and 1 room open for traumas. In my recollection, I had only one call as a CA-1 where I was up the entire 24 hours and that was for a hand re-implant. On my main OR call I typically got 4 hours of sleep. So it worked out to be about 57-66hrs/w depending if you had two 24 hr calls in a week. Post call days were guaranteed off, and non-call days I was relieved by 3pm. Some of my classmates had less in-house call because they did their general OR months at the VA or the University hospital where there is no in-house call. So it was possible to work less than 60 hrs/week.
CA 2/3 hours were markedly less because I took less frequent in-house call. Neuro and cardiac call were home call. OB was q4 in-house call. However, if it was a week day call you came in at 3pm-7am. If it was a weekend then 24hrs. The same if you did main OR call at Parkland. Over all, I have to agree that my average work hour came out to be mid-50s. The hours on cardiac were pretty long and unpredictable. Some calls were easy some I was up all night. This is due to the fact that the CT surgeons kept operating and the transplant volume increased. At its worse, probably bump mid 70s, other times on my cardiac rotation I probably worked 50s. The cardiac anesthesia attendings and fellows were good about make sure we didn't violate work hours. However, post-call was always off on Cardiac but not for neuro. On neuro I averaged around mid-40 hrs consistently. As a CA-3 there were months that were really light, for instance ambulatory anesthesia, no call or weekends and done the latest by 3pm.
The hours on ICU could be long given that it was q4h in-house call with no post-call day off. The average work hour was in the mid-70s/ week. There were times where we were q3h call because a resident got sick or took vacation.
Over all, I will say that as of 2 years ago, the average weekly hours at UTSW were in-line with the average quoted by the OP. Some weeks could be busier, some really light. In-house call could be busy, but I usually got sleep.
Overall, I believe I got solid training with great experience and at the same time had enough free time to do other things like travel and pick up new hobbies. There was usually enough time for studying. However, I will also say it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows either. Rank it if you like the program and don't if you didn't. Where ever you train you'll learn to push the same drugs, learn to dial in similar vaporizers, stick needles and catheters in the same anatomic structures, and volume resuscitate.
This is a very accurate post in terms of hours, workload, and overall flow. OB is no longer q4 in-house call for CA-1s, so the hours are slightly better. We don't do q3 calls whatsoever. Upper level residents are still generally pre-op monkeys overnight, but the rotation is slowly evolving and will take some effort to transition the upper levels from pre-op monkey to actual boardrunning. There are a few "bad egg" CRNAs, but for the most part, they are generally professional and collegial if you also put in the work yourself. There are lazy residents in this program who unfortunately take advantage of the CRNAs and do very little work in comparison.
There is a lot of misinformation here, but what lazypanda said above is absolutely correct. Actually, the CA-1s have less Q4 call these days (and definitely no Q3 business).
First of all, this program has had an ugly reputation of being malignant. I have not found a single malignant attending, even if there are a couple I do not like. The hours are not bad. You do sleep a lot during call. During pre-op clinic (8a-4p 5 days a week with no call), I was yearning for Parkland OR, because I love being in the OR, not clinic.
Second of all, Kpride, aka "Professional Gas Passer," if you feel like you need a cush program to become a great anesthesia attending, please do not come to UTSW. I do not like people who complain about work hours, especially in a field like anesthesia. Please find a surgery/medicine resident colleague and tell them about all your problems regarding getting worked hard.
Finally, if you want to see some crazy trauma (gunshot to inner groin, aortic dissection from MVA, etc) please come to UTSW. The attendings I admire the most are the ones that stay calm when s*** hits the fan, because they have seen even crazier things. They will even let me struggle for a while so I can learn on my own, but they are still in the room to bail me out when things are going south. You have three years to learn all this stuff while on someone else's license. The attending that does research all the time (and came from a "cush" program) and is really nervous (takes over the case) for a semi-routine case just bugs the crap out of me. If you think you can become a great attending doing routine lap choles and GYNectomies, please do not come to UTSW.
With that said, after seeing all this I would love to go into PP and do boob jobs and lap choles all day. But some measly patient with DM or previous MI will not scare me 🙂
I generally agree with this post. If you need to feel better about yourself, say bye to the surgery resident who's been up longer than you have and will stay in the hospital longer than you will as you're walking out of the OR. Hours aren't bad, and the overnight call allows you to see some crazy, rare things--rare enough that it is potentially identifying if I talk about them here. We see everything.
You do see more exotic cases on call, but the majority of time you are doing bs lap chole, appy, gyn, washout and i and d..oh yeah don't forget ortho.
In regards to attendings they act nice and friendly but trash residents at parkland ready room as well as zale ready room. Sources? Crna, surgical residents, and I even heard it myself. Again residency is tough but an attending is doing no one a benefit by trashing someone while acting like everything is Ok.
With that being said, there are some awesome attendings. The guys who ran sim lab were excellent teachers.
Overall it is a solid program and will be well trained but just know its not easy and can even be a headache if you piss off the wrong people. I'm just happy to never have to be at parkland again. The ancillary staff was terrible and there were always stupid rules every single week that made it a witch hunt
I also agree with this post. Generally, we try to put the CA-1s in "better" cases if one comes up, but it's a lot of overnight choles, appys, GYNs, and I&Ds distributed among the 3 CRNAs and resident. Parkland surgeons have gotten a lot better at not operating throughout the night for what it's worth.
Some attendings still trash talk residents. I agree that it used to piss me off, and I think it's pretty unfair to air out the dirty laundry in front of other attendings. It does affect how you are perceived as a resident in this program. That being said, I don't know that I have been or will be any different, although I try to be. We all talk amongst ourselves about which attendings are the "bad" ones who freeze up in dire situations and teach us completely wrong things, and we all know who the lazier or weaker residents are. Also, we all know who the awesome attendings are, and there are a great number of amazing faculty who excel at letting you figure things out on your own while teaching you their way of doing things.
I agree with your last line. You do not want to be labeled the "lazy" or "bad" resident here because it will likely stick with you for a long time. I don't know that it is any different at other programs, but it is especially true here. Some residents are not happy here, and it's understandable. There have been some recent tragedies in this department and with that, a lot of emotions and questionable actions by the leadership. Sometimes we feel like our voices are not being heard, but I think the people in charge have good intentions at least and are constantly trying to improve the program. I do think most of them (not all) care about us. They have made a lot of changes in the recent years based on resident feedback, and that's probably more than you can say for some other programs.
Overall, I think the training is great, the hours are reasonable, the residents look out for each other, and you will come out very confident and well-trained if you work hard and take advantage of the short 3-4 years you have here.
