Thank you for your response. I view it as a significant positive if WVSOM faculty is present to teach you medicine at all of the hospitals on their site lists. Thats impressive.
Hi Driver Doc,
I think I talked with you earlier.
CAMC has alumni there. So when we had cardiovascular system, predominatly we had alumni come back to give talks on their field. For example, one guy, Takubo, was very talaneted. There is a mixture of WVSOM and WVU residencies there. [
Edited note: I am hearing that Charleston is very very demanding - and the alumni who are there expect you to take both WVSOM and WVU boards and shelf exams - and this year the people who were rotating there really had some hard test. It was a rough academic year for those at CAMC. Needless to say, I heard the alumni were not happy with our performace this year.]
At some of the other large hospitals, such as Martinsburg - I think that, that hospital has alumni that are predominantly from WVU. I don't know about the veterans hospital center there. Martinburg looks to be a really great place - but only 8 or 9 people can go there.
We used to rotate at Morgantown, but that was a long time ago. Morgantown is WVU's town. The Mountaineers are very crazy for their football - they burn many couches whenever there is a football game. The hospital there is very excellent - but we don't go there anymore. We have residencies there - but we don't rotate there...
The other sort of large hospitals are in Parkersburg and Clarksburg. The natives tell me that Clarksburg is very good - and I got a pretty good vibe about that place.
As for me, I am going to Beckly for third year rotations. I'll be headquatered at Raleigh and a VA hospital there, and there's another hospital, but I have know idea about it (comes to show how in touch with reality I am huh?
) No fooling around.
Anyway, Raliegh doesn't have a residency program there - which I guess is bad because you ought to have some sort of exposure to the residency heirarchy and you should see attendings and residents work together - that way you have some idea for what residency is like. On the good side, it without residents there, you get one on one attention with the doctor. That can be the greatest thing on earth - or if you screw up - then you are trully in trouble; or so I heard. Raliegh has only 220 beds, so it's not too big. The hospital is very very crowded and it feels very busy (at least when I visited it) The place looks old, not like some of the other base sites like Clarksburg or Parkersburg or Martinsburg which are much more posh.
There are two really small rural sites too. Petersburg and Logan are very small - and I kid you not - but these are lonely places. I cannot fathom for the life of me how some of my classmates where so earger to go to Petersburg.
Logan is a little bigger than Petersburg - and there is a lot of crime in Logan county. Tons of overdose, drug addiction, and a lot of social problems there. Which makes for a great ER rotation. I remember there being a select crowd of ppl wanting to go there for that very reason - but also there were 4 or 5 ppl that had no choice but to go there - and they were upset.
There is also what is called a Northen and Southern tristate program. The Northern program sends you to urban Ohio, Michigan and rural WV. This is good if you are a big city cat - but the downside is that there is very little staff or connection to WVSOM should a problem arise - and there is bound to be problems. What if you and your preceptor don't get along? That has happened in the past - or what if there was a death in your family and you need to travel back home? And you are a nomad - moving from hospital to hospital.
Now some people are totally into the travelling thing - and if you are then Northern and Southern tristate seems to be a good thing. Southern tristate is a brand new thing. So we thought it was shaky and when it was time to choose where to go, only 2 people where daring enough to go that route. I think it is Alabama, Mississipi and Virginia. But they might change that to Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina...?
Anyway, when it was time to choose, there is what we call a lottery system. So you place your name down at where you want to go to. Out of about 180 people, I recall that 10 - 15 people did not get to go where they wanted - and they had to go to a different lottery. So about 5 or 6 people had to go to Logan - and they were really upset that they didn't get what they orginally wanted.
There are other base sites, but I am not really the person with the inside scoop to everything. I am only a humble cat that lives at the school library. It seems like Huntington and Asheland are popular too - but I don't know anything about those places. Huntington looked pretty nice, but I can say very little about it first hand.
Overall the selection process for 3rd year is great if you got what you wanted, and most did - but if you were one of those 10 or 15 people ...man...boy...what a bummer that must be. I tried to talk some of those people into going for Southern tristate - but they were set on not becoming a nomad. If I were one of those people, I would have become a nomad, hedge my bets, and take a chance and go out of state to the northern or tristate program.
I'm really looking forward to my 3rd year. Just get me away from these books.
