John Peter Smith Hospital/Ft. Worth Program

I'll tell you what little I know. I had a couple of classmates rotate there and both liked it a lot. Not much emphasis on academics/research but lots of clinical experience. Ft. Worth is a pretty nice city if you like texas and unbearable heat. I was told that the residents were happy and nice guys. If you are really interested, do a month there and shine. I didn't go to the interview they offered because of conflicts. Hope that helps some.

here's the deal with fort worth. i looked at a bunch of programs and definitely wanted a community program. for me, i really wanted early operating room experience and i really wasn't that big on research. the chairman, dr. lichtman, is a great guy, a retired rear admiral, and a very respected hand surgeon. he also is on the orthopaedic residency review committee and recently reviewed my previous school. the intern year is pretty cush. 3 months or surgery, 3 months of ortho, 2 months plastics and er, 1 month anesthesia, i month icu. on surgery, call is q4 and pre call days you are home early-2 pm or earlier, same goes for post call days. the day after call is clinic day-lasts until about 3 or 4-very cush for general surgery. the 2 months on plastics is home call. er is 16 12 hour shifts per month. anesthesia-home by noon every day if you want. icu month is pretty tough.. free lunch every day and most dinners are provided or reps bring stuff in. all the residents are very cool and happy. time is spent among several hospitals. jps is a typical county hospital-tons of trauma, but a good exposure to everything. the rest of the time is split between private hospitals and a very nice children's hospital(cook's). a few months of the fourth year are spent in dallas. there are a ton of community docs on staff and all are great. one of the sports guys is the team doc for TCU. you get great experience in all fields of ortho. if you are looking for a place to do tons of research, then this probably isn't the place, but if you want a place that gives you early or time, a lot of autonomy and a very cush intern year, then this is the place. oh yeah, the call room lounge is really nice as well-big leather sofas, big screen tv with direct tv, stocked refrigerators and computers all over the place. just some other nice perks.

Couple questions oldbonz. Do they take many non-rotators and do they take many people outside their region?

it seems as though they aren't very regionalistic. they have people from all over the place (ny, ca, chicago, sc, indiana). one new intern from texas this year who was a rotator but the other two weren't rotators. i think this is pretty much the consensus any place you look. if you go there and really make an impression, it can definitely help your cause, especially if you are a borderline candidate. one piece of advice that i will give that is something i did when i interviewed last year and i think it really made a difference.. i had a bunch of time off during my interview months, so i would always try and get to my interview destination a day early and ask to hang out with the residents/attendings, etc. i wasn't doing this to try and get an extra leg up on people. i was doing it to really get a good look at the places-- besides what you see on interview day. on interview day, everything is great and people love their respective programs, but if you can check it out beforehand by either rotating there or getting there a day or so early, then you can get a better feel for the program and talk to a lot more people about the place. hope this helps..

I'm a resident at JPS, or the "Fort Worth Affiliated Hospitals Orthopedic Residency Program" as you may see it called. We're at 5 hospitals, 6 surgery centers, and 9 private offices throughout our 5 yrs.
Most of the answers on this thread about the program are from medical students that may or may not of even rotated here - this is my opinion as a resident that knows (bottom line - awesome):

-Quality of JPS hospital: Way above average for any hospital county or not and getting better. See Facts below.
-The level of trauma we get is not only sufficient, but also encompasses the entire spectrum of cases and keeps increasing. We do most of it ourselves with either a staff guy scrubbed in for the majority of the case or pointing from behind us the whole time. Incredibly rarely do I feel left hung out to dry. Also I have friends at big academic trauma facilities that have several staff guys scrubbed in to acetabulum surgeries and the chief pulls traction or retracts. Can't become at 'em good like that.
-We have a brand new surgery center that we do 9-14 cases a day at by 3PM, which frees up the big hospital for big traumas. We have a brand new bad-a** trauma center/OR that is opening in December '07. Even still - we can't operate at night b/c our staff all have pvt practices to attend to the next day.
-Cases are diverse. At JPS we treat indigents with f'ed up, long-standing problems so that the routine ones seem like cake. They still get elective surgery just like our private cases, but they're just harder b/c they're fatter and sicker. The only thing we do not do is microvascular replants or meniscal transplants. If you're interested in replants, though, our chairman is the president of the hand society and will get you in any fellowship you want.
-Basically a little less than half of the residency is outside of the county hospital at cush surgical hospitals, centers, and pvt practices so you have great hours and learn REAL business sense. Some of them get themselves into a big hole so you also learn what NOT to do when you get out. About 4 months of the time that you are on the outside, the operative experience suffers and you feel like a medical student again and just get to close and retract - that pisses me off - but then you go back and DO all of the cases yourself with the little tricks that you just saw professional guys do and you realize it was worth it.
-We have a loose association with a DO med school in town b/c they give us research funding, staffing, and space in exchange for teaching med students. That's about as far as it goes and we do not currently have any DO residents. That's about as politically correct as I can get.

FACTS:
-Each senior this year scored over 90th percentile on the OITE.
-JPS was one of four county hospitals in the nation last year to earn money, and they made 70 MILLION dollars (Dr Evil would like that.) I don't think an average V.A. has that kind of income, and it doesn't all go into the CEO's pocket (even if he is a jerkoff, he is building major projects around the campus all the time, and our facilities are pretty freakin nice and advanced. Mayo Clinic is better, but this is kind of the concept of what they want JPS to eventually be.
-A couple of months ago our chairman, who is on the Orthopedic Residency Review Committee, had a meeting with the committee and they discussed various programs. Yearly the graduating classes from each residency program have their case loads evaluated - JPS residents had the HIGHEST AVERAGE NUMBER OF CASES IN THE NATION. That being said, we don't operate at night, just have lots of OR time.
-Most incoming residents have around a 240-ish on one USMLE or the other. Some have a lot higher, and occasionally lower. You will not be interviewed unless you have a certain USMLE (you could probably guess) unless you rotate through.
-We have our own clinics and follow our own pts. In other words, we get to be REAL doctors. That's a good feeling and you leave with confidence.
-About 3/4 of the residents are not from Texas and about half stay in Fort Worth when they are done. That should say a lot about the town.
-About 4 or 5 guys right now are single, the rest are married. You'd have fun either way.
-The females in the program do not seem as happy as the males.
-There are 34 staff guys that we work with, three more guys are coming in '08 (F&A, Peds, and Sports) - we have a Ft and Ankle operative experience weakness which will change with the staff addition.
-Anyone who does a fellowship pretty much gets whatever he wants. Don't take fellowship searches too seriously unless you really want to go into academics. The staff get mad when we say this, but the truth is a lot of academic programs just haven't heard of JPS and that means a lot to them when they want to show off CV's.

Overall, I don't think I would get a better operative experience or business education across the board from anywhere else. Almost all of us get along well and hang out together, and we have great lifestyles. Those were the things that were most important to me when I applied, and I couldn't be happier to be here.