What's the big deal about Cambridge HA?

[BobA]

I interviewed at Cambridge Health Alliance and loved it. Tons of smart people, great city, caring environment, mellow call schedule and the residents go on to get great jobs (Attending at McLean, UCSF in recent years).

What I can't figure out is why this little community hospital has such a great reputation for training. I can see that they have a ton of psych beds (something 140-150), so although the main hospital is small the psych department is very large. But all it's "peer" programs are at tertiary or quaternary care centers with multimillion dollar research budgets and fancy facilities. Is it the faculty? Has it just built up a rep over time? Is it the complicated patients?

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[billypilgrim37]

From what I remember, the CHA psych department formed when a bunch of the less-biological folks at BU lead a mass exodus when they didn't like their new very-biological chair. A handful of very motivated educator-clinicians created a very welcoming environment in a city with a huge glut of psychiatrists.

Plus, you give a bunch of white liberal northeastern psychiatrists the opportunity to see pretty much nothing but a) harvard/mit students, professors, and their children, and b) poor minorities, with surprisingly good public funding, well, that's like throwing a bucket of barbecued chicken into a family reunion in Georgia.

And to their credit, their business management has been excellent over the years, and they're slowly but surely adding a modicum of heavy biological research. Well, at least Jean Frazier's lab.

When Mass Mental dissolved, Longwood absorbed most of its remnants, but not all. Another boon for CHA.

The final factor that really helped CHA from a residency recruitment standpoint was the combination of MGH/McLean, two programs with wildly different philosophies. From what I've heard, McLean was some sort of absolute dream program, and probably fulfilled the niche that Cambridge does now from a resident perspective, plus it had a huge private research enterprise.

With the combination of MGH and McLean, the laid back McLean environment got sucked into the "MGH Marines." CHA was left as the "I want to get good training in Boston but I don't want to work that hard" option.

I loved Cambridge, and while probably everything up there isn't 100% accurate, that was the answer to your question that I was able to put together from talking to lots of people who seemed to understand a lot about the history of the place last year.

 

[Doc Samson]

From what I remember, the CHA psych department formed when a bunch of the less-biological folks at BU lead a mass exodus when they didn't like their new very-biological chair. A handful of very motivated educator-clinicians created a very welcoming environment in a city with a huge glut of psychiatrists.

Plus, you give a bunch of white liberal northeastern psychiatrists the opportunity to see pretty much nothing but a) harvard/mit students, professors, and their children, and b) poor minorities, with surprisingly good public funding, well, that's like throwing a bucket of barbecued chicken into a family reunion in Georgia.

And to their credit, their business management has been excellent over the years, and they're slowly but surely adding a modicum of heavy biological research. Well, at least Jean Frazier's lab.

When Mass Mental dissolved, Longwood absorbed most of its remnants, but not all. Another boon for CHA.

The final factor that really helped CHA from a residency recruitment standpoint was the combination of MGH/McLean, two programs with wildly different philosophies. From what I've heard, McLean was some sort of absolute dream program, and probably fulfilled the niche that Cambridge does now from a resident perspective, plus it had a huge private research enterprise.

With the combination of MGH and McLean, the laid back McLean environment got sucked into the "MGH Marines." CHA was left as the "I want to get good training in Boston but I don't want to work that hard" option.

I loved Cambridge, and while probably everything up there isn't 100% accurate, that was the answer to your question that I was able to put together from talking to lots of people who seemed to understand a lot about the history of the place last year.

Wouldn't totally disagree with any of the above except that it was Tufts not BU. CHA is a great program if you know for sure that it aligns with your career goals. It does have some sizeable gaps - CL experience probably being chief among them.

BTW, Mass Mental hasn't dissolved. Academically it was incorporated into BIDMC - but the facility and unique treatment population remain.