What departments/specialties at Vandy are well-known/ well-respected?

[machinehead]

What specialties or departments are
well-known as being excellent or considered among the top in the nation?
Ive heard the Emergency Med program is very good is this true?

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[8675309]

EM doc I shadowed said that Vandy's EM program is top-notch. Also, a surgeon I shadowed said that the surgery department is, in his words, "stellar". Take it for what it's worth.

Also posted this under Allopathic but didn't know where people would care about this more.

 

[droliver]

The internal medicine & subspecialties have good reputations. Plastic surgery is stong there. General surgery has a somewhat less strong word of mouth reputation.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Originally posted by droliver:
•The internal medicine & subspecialties have good reputations. Plastic surgery is stong there. General surgery has a somewhat less strong word of mouth reputation.•

Interesting that you should mention the latter - during one of my last med school electives, I worked with a PGY-IV resident who had left that program after PGY-III - mostly unpleasant personalities and not enough quality teaching in her opinion. 🙁

 

[draper]

As a former Vanderbilt medical student, I thought that Vanderbilt was an excellent place to train for surgery. It's certainly on the rigorous side but the quality of teaching for general surgery is superb- some of the best residents I've seen are Vanderbilt general surgery residents and I'm comparing them to those at Hopkins, Brigham, Stanford, Yale, and Duke.
That being said, there is a Southern old boy's mentality there where attendings are usually "sir" or "ma'am."
ENT/urology/orthopedics are all outstanding at Vanderbilt. In order to match to one of these specialities, a Vanderbilt medical student had to be AOA and have 235+ on the boards. Surgery, as a whole, is superb at Vanderbilt.
The Vanderbilt ER, chaired by Corey Slovis, is also outstanding- generally regarded as one of the top five in the nation. He is a phenomenal teacher and ER residents become very knowledgeable and more than just the triage doctors that one unfortunately sees at certain programs.

 

[droliver]

In re. to Draper's observation comparing Vanderbilt's surgery with the "Big boy's" (Yale, Stanford, Duke, Hopkin's, Brigham & Women's):

Ironically, being compared to the residents @ several of those places is probably not the highest compliment you could make. While no one can argue about the quality of fellowships at several of those places, the general surgery programs can suffer a bit in comparison. This phenomena is very common especially @ institutions with outstanding vascular or thoracic fellowships where you end up being boxed out of many of the most interesting cases. The attractive factor at many of the general surgery programs with the biggest names often lays upon the success in postgraduate fellowship placement rather than on the general training as an end to itself. Those programs also almost uniformly require 1-2 years in the lab which can delay clincal practice to your mid to late 30's.

You'd be surprised at which university programs get real strong word of mouth for general surgery(it varies year to year) like UTenn-Memphis, Wake Forest, Univ. of Florida, UT-Southwestern, Louisville, Cinncinnati, or Michigan rather than the Harvard,Yale, MGH, or Duke crowd.

 

[draper]

Well droliver, you bring up a good point which is essentially what one uses to define a good surgical program.

The main problem that I see with your argument about word of mouth programs that it does in fact vary from year to year. This varies according to the complexion of the residents, the image the chiefs portray to interviewees, and the chairman's overall demeanor and personality. So, it'd be difficult to pin one place as "always strong" unless there is an unusual amount of stability in the program which these days, is rare in general surgery.

You're correct in pointing towards fellowships as one of the main criteria I used to compare Vanderbilt to the "big boys" of general surgery. Traditionally and recently, the programs I have mentioned have matched into the biggest reputation fellowships. However, therein, of course lies the pertinence of reputation to actual quality of education.

This is a debate that could go on and on...and already has such as in measures such as the US News & World Report rankings where reputation seems to large correlate to their rankings. By no means am I pointing to them and other rankings such as the Gourman's as THE WORD on training programs, but... the sad fact is that reputation is what most people go by, for better or worse.

Therefore, I'll amend my answer and simply say that there are plenty of quality programs out there and that the best program for a particular person varies from personality to personality.

 

[OzDDS]

The internal medicine & subspecialties have good reputations. Plastic surgery is stong there. General surgery has a somewhat less strong word of mouth reputation.

So if the plastics program is really strong at Vanderbilt, does that mean that the OMFS program is not as good because of any potential battle between ENT, Plastics, and OMFS. Or do you think the reverse would be true, since they have a stellar plastics, that OMFS guys are better trained because of the expereince they get during their plastics roatations? What is the dymanic between the depts. there like?

 

[phoenixsupra]

One thing to remember about vandy gen surgery is that vanderbilt severed it's ties with St. Thomas this year after a long and ugly dissagreement. So vandy residents will suffer a significant drop in case load for the forseeable future. Vandy is definately the last real bastion of the "old boy network". That is very true. And this doesn't seem likely to change any time soon. The atmosphere is a tad negative but the residents talk a lot about how happy they are. For sure they are all enthuiastic about Tarpley, the residency program director and Nylander taking over the va is also something they're happy about.

Vandy is very conservative. The atmospere is fairly stuffy. If you're looking for an easy going place with a congenial culture you may want to consider not applying to prestigious programs. In general it seems that the more prestigious a program the lousier the atmosphere is.

 

[phoenixsupra]

So if the plastics program is really strong at Vanderbilt, does that mean that the OMFS program is not as good because of any potential battle between ENT, Plastics, and OMFS. Or do you think the reverse would be true, since they have a stellar plastics, that OMFS guys are better trained because of the expereince they get during their plastics roatations? What is the dymanic between the depts. there like?

ENT, plastics and omfs are all strong at vandy. While technically they are in competition, they actually co-operate really well and it seems like there is more than enough work to go round. They all sort of feed off the massive trauma program.