Rotated at UF Gainesville last year, ranked it #1 - matched elsewhere. Rotation consisted of spending time on every attending's service that has a say in who gets in: Gearen (chairman, joints), scarborough (program director, tumor), woo (peds), vlasak (trauma), ect. Spent roughly a week with each attending. At the end of the rotation you give a presentation ~20min at fracture conference. Rotating students took call about once a week; we had one weekend off, one where we just came in to round, and we took call one saturday of the month.
What I liked about the program:
-conference every morning at 7am where either attendings or residents give a formal presentation about an interesting case on their service or on a specific topic; there was pimping but overall pretty benign. Also the last 15 minutes of every morning were spent going over x-rays from patients seen in the ER overnight. This was where seniors taught juniors and trauma attendings threw in words of wisdom; I though this was good because it made sure everyone was on the same page about treatments, ect.
-nightfloat system had just been implemented where the pgy2's each took 3 months of 6p-6a call. The resident on night float complained about it but everyone talked about it as a "take one for the team" system since after your nightfloat months you never had to take in-house call during the week again for the rest of residency. Also the junior resident that was on trauma and nightfloat were exempt from weekend call during these months, so six months of the pgy2 year was without weekend call. The weekend junior call was split between the pgy3 and the two pgy2 residents that were not on nightfloat or trauma - this came to work out that the juniors were taking one weekend day every three weeks or so....not bad. The pgy4 & pgy5 were considered chiefs and would come in only to operate - their call schedule also seemed pretty sweet.
-probably the nicest facilities I saw of all the places I interviewed. They have a new clinic building that is only 3-4 years old that is 4 stories and massive. It had a huge physical therapy area, radiology suite, scope lab (that the residents have access to for practice), research facilities, biomechanics lab, and clinic space for all 8 or 9 ortho specialties. It was pretty impressive to be able to see a patient in clinic then send them downstairs to get an MRI and see them back in two hours with a read. All films were digital. Records were dictated but charts still paper. It was just being finished while I was there but there was a new outpatient surgery center being finished sometime last fall directly adjacent to the ortho clinics.
-very nicely laid out intern year. Interns spent only 4 or 5 months on gen surg services. The rest were SICU, MSK radiology, anesthesia, ER, ect. Two ortho trauma months, one ortho onc month where interns say they actually got into the OR. Pgy2 through 5 had a very balanced rotation schedule and rotated through every subspecialty including tumor & foot/ankle.
-tons of extras that the dept funded. Residents had books, conferences, lead, lupes, cafeteria money, ect paid for by the department.
-probably some of the nicest and best trained attendings I met on the trail. Multiple attendings with more than one fellowship. Their main trauma guy, Vlasak, did fellowships in spine, tumor, & joints and now he mainly does trauma.
-everyone seemed pretty happy including residents.
What I didn't like:
-none of the residents seemed to like the VA experience. They spend a couple of months there as pgy5s and pgy2s and most of the complaints seemed to stem from the inefficiency of the VA (which is how it is everywhere). Also they only had one attending at the VA.
-dont do sports until pgy4. This was supposed to change in the coming years since they just increased the class size from 3 to 4 residents a year ago and the talk was that they would get sports experience as a pgy3. Dont know if this is happening.
-gainesville is a college town. Weather was nice, undergrads were beautiful. Being from another SEC school, I hate the gators. Most of the residents were married.
-spine experience was only during the pgy3 year, although two of the chiefs were going into spine.
-fellows in both tumor & hand, although residents claimed they didnt interfere with their education.
-I stayed in touch with a couple residents after my rotation and all had positive things to say, but still didnt get a spot there. Apparently attendings have the "say" about who gets in. Not bitter though, just happy to be doing ortho elsewhere. Overall, top tier program.
