Utah

Campbell Clinic
UTSW

Oklahoma
Cincinnati
Vanderbilt
JPS
Arkansas


All of these programs have very nice level one pediatric hospitals affiliated with them. I can only speak of the operative experience personally at OU........it is second to none

The two Akron Ohio programs (Summa Health and Akron General) both spend time at Akron Children's, a free-standing children's hospital in Akron that employs 8 full time pediatric orthopaedic surgeons.

There is no fellowship so no competition for cases with fellows.

Operative experience and volume is unbelieveable. I am a Summa resident - we spend a month there as interns, 2 months as PGY-2s, 2 months as PGY-3s, and 2 months as PGY-5s. The Summa and Akron General PGY-5s alternate and act as the chiefs of the service but we also have PGY-3s who rotate from Alleghany and PGY-2s who rotate from the Cleveland Clinic.

Every attending there is amazing to work with - they are all dedicated to teaching and enjoy it. Worth checking out...

Campbell Clinic has superb operating experience - LeBohneur is the only level 1 ped trauma in the region. seemed like everyday there was at least 2 spine cases. you work with Canale and Beaty and you have 4 younger attendings that are producing major research in peds, mostly in spine. there is one peds fellow who mostly operates on the spine cases. you can work as much as you want on these cases. generally though, the residents mostly helped open and closed because of the shear amount of work going on elsewhere.

At Penn, residents rotate at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the No 1 rated childrens hospital in the country. CHOP is immediately next door to Hospital of UPenn and has excellent orthopaedic faculty.

Given that the OP already mentioned Hopkins I just wanted to put in a good word again for our programs Peds experience. Hopkins has the only level 1 pediatric trauma center in the entire state. We often even get serious cases flown in from surrounding cities of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Both the Union and Univ. of MD come to our program for their major peds experience. As a resident here you get a significant about of peds experience both in the OR and in the ER. You will be more than capable of placing spica casts on yourself, reducing all sorts of peds extremity fxs, etc. We also are very heavy into peds spine deformity work and spine in general. Peds also happens to be the most chosen sub-i rotation because its just an awesome experience.

With that said, you shouldn't chose a program just because of their peds exposure, but overall how well rounded they are. Hopkins is well rounded and so are many other great programs, but you don't want to go anywhere they is too strong in peds in weak in many other areas.