HSS Away Rotation?

I would suggest the SAS service because you get to work with Dr. Sculco who is the surgeon in chief of the hospital and has the final say in choosing the residents.

sports is another service you might want to think about. the chair of the residency selection committee for this year (Riley Williams) is a sports guy, so your time would be well spent in terms of enhancing your chances of getting an interview.

Sport and SAS (surgical arthritis service which is an arthroplasty rotation) are the two most popular away rotations, probably because of the sentiments expressed in these posts. Students on the sports and SAS services will work with Dr. Williams and Dr. Sculco respectively, but this will not give you any real advantage over other applicants. While a chairman may have the theoretical ability to have the final say in choosing the residents, that ability is not really exercised at HSS. Interviews and the rank list are determined by consensus of the resident selection committee, which is comprised of about 20 attendings and the chief residents, all of whom participate in the interviews of all the applicants. So it not necessary to impress Dr. Williams or Dr. Sculco before the interview, but your goal during an away rotation is to impress everybody. More realistically, a highly successful away rotation will result in a strong endorsement from one attending, the residents you worked with, and a generally positive feeling from anyone else that you may have interacted with. Consequently it is much better to work closely with a couple of attendings rather than trying to work with as many as possible. This is especially true on the sports service, where there are more attendings than days in a month.

Here are the primary people rotators work with on other services, all of whom are excellent and love to have students:
Trauma rotation: Dr. Helfet and Dr. Cornell
Spine service: Dr. Oleary and Dr. Cammisa
Hand service: Dr. Weiland, Dr. Wolfe
Peds service: Dr. Widmann and Dr. Green
Foot service: Dr. Deland and Dr. Roberts
Metabolic bone: Dr. Lane
Fracture: Dr. Lorich

I rotated for a month on Fracture with Dr. Lorich. Its a challenging rotation and you are outside of the HSS facitlity working at NYP. However, in accordance with what the post above says, you are working with a couple attendings and you get a lot of face time in clinic and the OR. Based on my experience with the interview process and post-interview antics, working on the Fracture service does not hinder your chances of making an impression that can work to your advantage in the recuritment process. In fact, I think it definitely helped.

I should also mention that you also learn quite a bit about the management of routine skeletal trauma which hopefully will serve you well in the future.

Good luck to those applying...so glad to be through with it.

I rotated with two others on the sports service. All solid students, all got solid recs from attendings, but none from top 10 schools. None of us got interviews when the season came. HSS has circa 20-25 rotators a month in prime months and they interview an equal number of rotators and non-rotators totaling circa 80. I'd suggest finding a different program to rotate at where being a rotator means a little more. If you choose to rotate at HSS i'd suggest something other than the sports service where it is more difficult to get noticed. This isn't to knock the program, it set some standards for what i looked for in a program.

If anyone has done an away at hss or knows any information on the actual experience please PM me. I am especially interested in the joints (SAS) service. Thanks.

They one interview 50 applicants, with only one interview day. There is a bias towards rotators in that group of 50.

I took off a year in between 3rd and 4th year to do a research year at HSS on the Foot and Ankle Service. It was an amazing experience for which I will be forever grateful. You probably won't get too much experience with the residents on Foot & Ankle because they only do brief rotations as a PG2 and PG4 or 5 I believe. The attendings on the service are a blast. Great guys. Very interested in working with students and residents.
Fracture and Trauma will be spending some time at New York Presbyterian across the street from HSS because HSS doesn't have an emergency room. Dr. Helfet is an amazing surgeon. The residents and fellows speak very highly of him.
Sports is a great service and you will have the opportunity to work with some very big names like Dr. Allen, Dr. O'Brien, Dr. Warren, and Dr. Altchek.
I don't have any experience with any of the other services unfortunately.

Hope this helps.

Also of note, HSS is getting a new Surgeon in Chief as Dr. Sculco will be stepping down.

Thanks for your input. I guess no one really knows much about the joints rotation...