community-vs-academic

Just a thrilled fourth year student, here. I matched into my preferred orthopaedic surgery residency - a community based program. My impression is that, just as in residency, there are many types of fellowships out there. Some will be more academic based and some will be more community based. However, I feel that, just as in residency, these programs will all have academic and community orthopaedic experience - some will be more extreme than others. BTW, one of the recent graduates of the program I am headed to attended Pitt's sports fellowship with Fu himself - so I don't think that if you prefer a community program, you will rule yourself out of a more academic fellowship. Just my thoughts.

congrats bonebar. that's awesome. i just started my 4th yr this month. i hope im sitting in your shoes this time next year. rockon and thanks for the advice.

The only way a community program will be a disadvantage for you is if you want to go to a major academic place for fellowship. They MAY look down on the community programs. I think there are some advantages to community programs and fellowship search as well. Most community programs have 20-50 attendings, depending on the program, with most being fellowship trained. That could be a foot in the door, or at least someone with firsthand experience for advice, for multiple fellowships. In general, there are more fellowships than there are applicants, so you can land a fellowship of your choice much more easily than landing an ortho spot of your choice.

encouraging words ortho2003. thanks. i have several months to decide before interviewing and ranking, etc. you have definitely enlightened me. being in a major academic center, we students often get snickered at if we mention matching at a community hospital, even a well respected one.

I had a question about this myself....Anyone have any more input on this? Esp. those of you in residency now, or at a community program.

How can we find a listing of the community programs? When I look on FREIDA, I see mostly university-based residencies.

I know there are no stupid questions, but... this might be an exception. Thanks in advance.

some (or most) of the University-affiliated programs are considered community programs. They may have some assoc. with a nearby univ....i.e, students rotate thru, but otherwise they are community programs. (at least the ones i'm familiar with)

The community programs are listed with all the academic programs on FREIDA. Just do a search by specialty for orthopaedic surgery, and then it will list all 152 programs in the country. Scroll down and look for programs that don't have a university/college in the name (although there are a couple of academic programs that don't have university in the name, but you can figure out that it is an academic program based on the name).

OK....so back to my original question....(ha, ha). Seriously though, does it matter?

well being a resident at a community program i can tell you that i really enjoy myself and dont feel as if i am missing anything. Obviously you cantthrow a large blanket generalization over ALL community programs, but if i were to try it would be that we tend to operate more b/c we have to do less scut work. Most private practice situations are not dependant on the residents to function so resident participation is a bounus for the private attendings who get the lifestyle and $$$ of private practice and get resident coverage for their ER and OR cases. Many programs have an affiliaiton with a university. For example both the grand rapids and kalamazoo programs are affiliated with michigan state. And dont think you cant get good fellowships, because you can. Overall you should go for the place where you feel like you would fit and that you think would train you adequately both operatively and academically (meaning book-smarts, not or skills). Dont get me wrong, i went to plenty of academic places where i thought i would be perfectly happy, but i am glad i ended up at a community program. just my 2 cents

THere is no disadvantage whatsoever in acquiring fellowships with community programs. All of our chiefs got the fellowships of their choice last year and our fourth year class has, as well. Beneftis of community places, as bonedoc pointed out are that we operate a ton and do a lot less scut. I also like seeing real medicine, rather than academic medicine. We get to see how 40+ different attendings practice. We get to see what types of practices we like and what types we don't, we also get to see multiple ways to do something, rather than one or two that you typically see in an academic place with one or two guys per specialty.

You can choose community programs, or university affiliated when searching frieda to find the comuunity places. Although, some community programs are listed under academic for some reason. I interviewed at mostly community places, some of the best being Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Akron, Fort Wayne, Wichitaw, Mt. Caramel, Greenville, Carolinas, Beuamont, JPS, and Geisenger.