This rumor will never die, but I'll again attempt to crush it....
Trust me, you'll operate plenty here, probably more than you want on many services (somewhere in your Sim rotations you'll realize your mail has been forwarded to the OR as your doing your 14th knee of the day).
The only areas you "have to do a fellowship" are spine, hand, tumor...and you have to do a fellowship in those anywhere. If you just want to do general orthopedics, you'll see more joints than you will ever need, both bread and butter cases and the most off the wall, complex, crazy revisons you can imagine (I can't imagine anyone needing to do a joint fellowship after training here). You get plenty of hand/foot and ankle for a general orthopod as well (carpel tunnels, distal radius fx, etc). If you want to do academics, your going to do a fellowship in anything regardless, although probably here you could still pass on a joints fellowship like I said.
Depending on your rotations, you may need or at least think you need some more scope exposure, that's the only area where the "have to do a fellowship" rumor may have at least some meniscule truth. That said, one of the chiefs who just graduated did a fellowship anticipating needing help in that area....but after his elective rotations he felt he wouldn't have had to do the fellowship now (the price of having to apply for fellowships so far in advance I guess). Similarly another chief is going straight into a sweet general practice and feels he is more than comfortable. There are several that did sports fellowships, but I think all of those guys did them out of interest and not b/c they felt they had to. In addition, we're kicking around ways to increase the scope experience even more (we have several staff that do a ton of scopes, but it's difficult to get everyone who wants to rotate with them all the time they want), and we also have an away rotation in Jacksonville where pretty much all you do is scopes for 3 months, just you running the show with the boss watching and teaching from what I hear.
There are reasons to not come here for some people (Rochester probably isn't for everyone, although it's not that bad, even in the winter; Some people can't stand wearing a suit in clinic, although I've really found no difference b/w a suit vs a dress shirt and tie and a white coat...I'd much rather be in scrubs either way). I don't think lack of operative exposure/experience should be anywhere on your list though, but you'll have to check us out to know for sure.
As for your rotation, you'll spend 2 weeks with 2 different consultants. It's pretty laid back, just help out however you can, know your anatomy and be yourself (unless yourself is a bad thing, then I guess you better find someone elses personality to borrow). You'll interview with our PD and one other staff while you're up here, usually the last week of your rotation. Let me know if you have any questions.....just send me a PM or whatever, I still try to check out this site every week or so.
