Be Careful of Mayo Residency Program

you should probably be careful regarding such a topic if you don't have the full details to these incidents.

So is it better to go somewhere else, then practice ortho even though maybe you should have been screened out?

Gotta love medicine, esp. ortho, even if you aren't any good, it's guaranteed money, better than the NFL.

I am not going to divulge more on this forum specially to protect privacy of people who have been at the receiving end at Mayo.

My goal is that applicants consider this into their decision while ranking Mayo. Probably they should ask the program director (if they dare) - why does it take mayo program 4 to 5 years to figure out that some one should not be graduated?.

Medical school means lots of loans. I think that good programs owe it to their residents to show them the door within first 2 years. If they take a resident into senior ranks (3rd year onwards) then they need to do whatever is necessary to graduate that person such as imposing extra years of training. Remember that these people must have done well enough at one point to merit matching into the Mayo program. So it is not that these people being shown the door are worthless.

Giving somebody bad news late in the training has major financial consequences.

Like I said - buyer beware. This is for your benefit if you are a candidate. I wish that more information such as this about other programs were posted so candidates can benefit and programs may become more cautious about how they behave with residents once they get there..

I'm not suprised they would lose a few. It is a huge program. As for your accusations, I'm sure there were good documented reasons to terminate them. It's a huge pain in the butt to boot people out of a program. It would be nice to know your qualifications for this post. It would also be nice to hear from someone currently at Mayo to shed a different perspective on this.

I'm not sure about any specific program but I did know someone who asked the question on interviews, "What does the program do when a resident is lagging behind". Some programs will identify these individuals early and work with them to overcome any deficiencies. Some programs will place the entire responsibility on the resident. Some programs will do nothing until it is too late.

I have no idea where any of the programs stand on this since I was not clever enough to ask this question but it says a lot about a program and how they value resident education in the way that they answer this.

So, let me get this strait. You have a Ryan Leaf on your team but you should let them keep playing just because they were good in college. Past performance does not dictate success in the future, it is a great predictor though.