That’s probably a good thing. Busy training in the northeast seems to be a relic of the past with NYU not having attendings to staff cases or sedations and Rutgers doubling the size of their program in 5 years and dividing the volume to each resident by more than half and the loss of their busiest orthognathic attending. You pretty much need to go to the south or midwest for good training. People stay in the northeast for location.
The curse in OMS. Recap of unmatched spots in 2024
The curse has begun
-a few decades ago, some leaders in OMS started subspecialty fellowship training like cancer, free flap reconstruction etc
-over 20-30 years, their fellows became faculties of other residency programs because they cant really practice cancer surgery in private practice setting just like ENT head and neck surgeons. Many of them are foreigners, like surgeons trained in different countries but came to US for fellowship. They can't practice outside of academia due to license issues, so they end up staying in academia as cancer surgeons. They are very biased and polarized.
-glorified days of big scope programs are over. Many OMS programs heavy on cancer training cant afford to have many PAs or NPs. Also, no midlevel providers want to work for those malignant surgeons.
The match result and the open spots in 2024 reflect the current state of OMS residency training. It is a wake-up call in our specialty. The current trend is the result of malignant faculties abusing their residents, violating work hours, brainwashing their residents and providing useless scut rather than high quality clinical education.
That is the curse in OMS.
If you are in the match cycle 2024-2025, please rank your list wisely. Don't regret after a few years down the road.
Lets see how a new match cycle turns out in 2025. Many 6 year programs doing cancer will have open spots on the day of match.
Also, Oklahoma is probably the only program where the residents treatment plan the entire orthognathic case in VSP (the resident does the VSP in dolphin themselves). Best treatment planning education in a residency program imho
It's hard for me to believe that the comments in this thread may actually be from residents and not dental students. Such huge generalizations being tossed around based off of heresay and rumors? I heard more about changes happening in my program from residents interviewing than our own attendings knew about. All completely bananas or taken very wrongly out of context.
Or when I ask how they got their info on Loma Linda that makes them want to come here. They start saying things like "The best in the west" etc.
Nice, I see you've read the same 8 threads from 2004,2006,2011,2017 etc. that I was reading myself a decade ago.
Maybe you know a resident here? I just came back on service after medical school and general surgery year, it's vastly different than when I was last on.
Maybe you externed here? Well thats a vastly different experience for everyone. Did you spend the week with Dr. Stringer doing orthognathic?
Which as a side note, at the very spry age of 80+yrs old will do somewhere in the realm of 120+ orthognathic himself this year, not counting his work at kaiser doing more orthognathic on the weekend, as well as multiple other surgeries. (under estimating likely as hes at around 30 cases over the last two months) You could only imagine what he was throwing down in his 70's. The argument of "what happens when he leaves" is old enough that every one of our attendings had the same question when they were in residency. There's on average at least another 1-2 cases a week outside of his as well from other attendings.
It's been this way for literal decades:
Who would you consider to be the "big names" in orthognathic surgery? That is, they do a lot of cases, have made big contributions to the field, etc... William Arnett? Timothy Turvey? Larry Wolford? Jeffrey Posnick? If you had to have orthognathic surgery and wanted to choose the "best" who...
forums.studentdoctor.net
Well, I just finished my first day of my externship at Loma Linda and all I can say is, "I don't know jack about oral surgery." There is so much to know it's insane. I already have a big ol' list of stuff to look up tonight, but the program seems pretty cool so I'm stoked.
forums.studentdoctor.net
Or this one with the numbers being at least the same:
Loma Linda OMS program is often overlooked when applying. Here is some info on cases the graduating chiefs got to cut. Cover 3 hospitals – LLU Medical Center, Riverside County, Arrowhead County Attendings: Dr. Herford MD DDS FACS - Chair, Dr. Dean MD DDS FACS - Program...
forums.studentdoctor.net
That was posted 14 years ago. The numbers havent gotten worse, in fact now we do have cancer and a good amount of it too. With no fellows, NPs,PAs. But we work a lot of the time in conjunction with ENT doing the resections and restorations for Jaws in a Day as they take care of the flap portion. They even will be primary on the patients, but the nursing staff here and SICU know it well. It doesnt hurt that the SICU generally will have at least one OMFS,ENT resident or Plastics at any given time either.
This isnt a random moment in time either. That thread from 2011 with the logs?
Here are the attendings listed at that time 14 years ago.
Dr. Herford MD DDS FACS - Chair,
Program Director Dr. Dean MD DDS FACS - Program Director, Dr. Stringer DDS,
Dr. Tanaka DDS, Dr. Elo DDS, Dr. Moreta DDS, Dr. Roberts MD.
So still have 5 of those 7 still around.
We are still covering THREE level 1 trauma centers every third week for facial trauma. As you can imagine there is no shortage. With Arrowhead Regional the county hospital for the nations largest county of San Bernardino we are facial trauma 24/7, and to add to that, we are the ENT service as well as there are no Plastics, or ENT residents. That Dr. Roberts ^ is the ENT service outright as well as whichever resident is rotating with him that month or on any given evening.
I don't say all of this to brag or anything, I say it to say that there are plenty of great programs out there with great attendings doing great things. Most people have never heard of Dr. Stringer and yet he has been quietly and single handedly performing a large portion of all orthognathic cases for the entirety of the inland empire and even the greater Los Angeles Area with Kaiser Sunset (and multiple surgeons) taking the other portion.
Im sure there are many other examples like this that just dont get talked about. We are tucked out away from the LA Programs, a 30-45 min drive from the nearest airport, have a religious institution in the name that somehow really takes over the conversations when discussing the program. I don't think I or any other resident has thought about that aspect of it since a couple classes in med school at most, its so much of a non-factor outside the application I dont even know how to comment on it when asked.
The full scope OMFS programs are here and cancer is another skill we can add to a long list of useful ones and has greatly improved the residents competence in all other areas. Im not sure why we or those others out there don't get talked about much, but I think we are just kind of doing our thing. Im the only one who has really been on SDN much, we dont get too many externs probably because of inconvenience and having 3 other programs within a 50 mile radius with bigger brand names. The religious aspect hilariously is a barrier to applicants as well. Im not sure where anyone DOES get info from, maybe reddit for medical school or something but they certainly dont get it from any current or past resident because I've never heard of anyone who has gone here for OMFS gripe in any serious manner about being a religious institution, because I don't know what would even be the complaint. Couple that with the fact that we spend almost more of our time at the other hospital we cover which is not affiliated.
The larger issue is just the student debt. I will ultimately be in private practice but desparetley want to and will cover trauma wherever I go. I definitely wish I had a plan to do more of that and less dentoalveolar but financially it just wont be possible. If full scope programs go away, its not from cancer taking over its from an inability to pay the price.
