Northwestern Residency

I rotated at northwestern and think that overall, it's a strong program. If you rotate, you are basically only competing with 50 people for 9 spots (assuming you get an interview).

Strengths: Very strong sports with great faculty, good hand, Foot/ankle, good lifestyle, very nice hospital, residents get the top notch fellowships, overall, the residents seem like a good group of guys, lots of teaching conferences in the morning (they do have saturday conference though)

Weaknesses: Don't see a ton of trauma, many of the patients are private and even the senior residents end up retracting in some cases, little resident autonomy at Northwestern Memorial (I'm told it's better at Evanston and VA/County), spine and joints rotations could be better though they said they are hiring 2 new joint faculty

I was also considering rotating there but have heard mixed things about their operative experience. Does anybody have any first-hand insight? (ie do their chiefs look competent in the OR? What year do you really start to be the primary surgeon in the cases?)

I also rotated at Northwestern, and I completely agree with TornMeniscus. They do a lot more watching then operating at their primary hospital NMH. The up side to this is you get to see a lot of good surgeons, with different techniques operate. The downside is your operating less than you would be otherwise.

They still finish with ~2000 cases though, so they probably do okay.

You have ask yourself what is most important to you. Do you want an easy lifestyle? Big city? Big name? Or do you want to operate a lot?

What they have over other places are:
- really nice facilities
- Chicago
- easy lifestyle
- do well for fellowships
- good conferences

I was a med student at Northwestern. This is what I posted about the program 2 years ago.

Specifically about operative experience, one of the fellows at my program was a Northwestern resident. He's respected and liked by most of the residents here and is definitely not deficient in his operative ability. However, he has admitted that the operative experience for residents is much different here than at Northwestern. Honestly, that was one of the reasons that I ranked NU lower on my rank list...because I'm the type of person that needs to do things a lot in order to learn....and I didn't think I would get that at Northwestern.