Currently starting pgy-4 year at St. Mary's. So far, it has been a blast. The New Chairman has been in place 2 years now and is doing an amazing job. The basic rotation structure is the same, with several changes. Research has been greatly improved as we now have a full time research coordinator and another liason who finds us biomechanics and basic lab space (if needed) whenever we need. Several new grants and a lot of money has been put into research...the long and short of it - there are about 30 ongoing projects and its easy to jump into one. Hihgland is still the wonderful same place. Kaiser has an amazing new chair. the new schedule there is PGY-2: 1 month foot/ankle, 2 months joints, 1 month sports
PGY-3: 2 months sports, 1 month foot and ankle, 1 month tumor/hand
PGY4: 3 months tumor/hand, 1 month either foot/ankle or revision joints. There is also a smattering of Peds at kaiser and they just hired a trauma trained guy so there will be opportunity to do referral acetabulars (expected volume of around 60-80 tabs/year) in addition to the ones at highland. They have weekly fracture/M&M as well as joint conference and bi monhtly joint conference with Highland
St Mary's rotation and the call schedule remains essentially the same (which is phenomenal), with weekly, spine,sport and joint conference.
There are currently some residents going abroad for 1 month electives to Africa and Bhutan as pgy-4's which is sweet. The didactics are as previous mon/tues, but with more attending involvement ( less resident power points). It is usually 2 hours of lecture each day, with another hour as fracture conference and one more as miscellaneus - M&M, bioskills lab, etc. Thus far, having finished my pgy-3 year, I have approx 1000 cases, all of which I am primary or first assist. Almost never is there more than one resident per case which is great for teaching.
Contrary to belief, we take rotators and non rotators. It's self selecting though and you should want to come to this sort of program. We interviewd about 20 this year, 8 of which were rotators. No problem with the 80 hour work week at all, tons of hands on. Autonomous clinics as well as clinics with attendings (but not overwhelmingly so). I am 100% satisfied. Nearly everyone got their 1st or 2nd choice of fellowship. You come out of here with great training and spend 5 years in a great city with some of the nicest attendings around. PM me if you have any questions
