I don't personally know about penn, but there was a lengthy thread about them a couple months back: http://www.orthogate.org/forums/viewtop ... ight=upenn

That's for UPenn in Phillie, but I'm asking about Penn State in Hershey.

Wow i am sorry. I read your post wrong.

I'm pretty familiar with the program. They only went to 5 residents/year a couple of years ago. Threre should be 4 chiefs, and of the 4 that would have been chiefs this year, one went into the lab for a year and is currently a 4, and the other went into anesthesia. 4's and 5's take chief call.[ You should probably talk the residents before posting information.

quote="conservative15"]While preparing to apply to Hershey for an away rotation, I discovered on their website that they have an unusually large attrition rate. It seems like they lost 3 residents in their chief class, and 2 residents in their PGY-3 class. That accounts for 5 residents total, or 20% of their total resident body.


Does anyone know whats going on there? Why are residents leaving at such a high rate? Is it a malignant program? And how are their residents expected to comply with work hour regulations when they are five residents shy of what they've been approved to train? Surely the other residents are having to pick up the slack to cover a lot of attendings, and the resident morale must suffer from this.


I remember viewing their website last fall and didn't see that they had so many residents leaving. They must have just lost a lot of these residents recently. I'd hate to be a chief resident there right now or in 2 years; these guys will have to take chief call virtually every other night after loosing so many residents in their class. When are they supposed to study for their boards in their chief year?


If anyone has info on what's going on and on addressing my concerns above, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

I'm pretty familiar with the program. They only went to 5 residents/year a couple of years ago. Threre should be 4 chiefs, and of the 4 that would have been chiefs this year, one went into the lab for a year and is currently a 4, and the other went into anesthesia. 4's and 5's take chief call.[ You should probably talk the residents before posting information.

Not sure where you got these numbers from. I just arrived at Penn State (which I ranked very high on my list), from Denver Colorado, and am finding it to be one of the friendliest programs I have seen. The residents and attendings are very collegial and residents hang out a lot outside of work. --As far as the missing residents go, I think you may be counting wrong. Penn State recently made the move to 5 residents. As far as any missing chiefs--I am not aware of this situation, although I seem to remember someone having been in the lab--and this story makes sense as we currently have 5 chiefs in the upcoming year and only 4 R4's. It would surprise me if anyone would actually drop out of the program for anything other than personal goal related reasons (like changing your mind on specialties)--the program is great and the attendings are fantastic.