USF

Seriously? Not a single person has any answers?

Hey, I interviewed there... Residents came from diverse areas.. Everyone that did rotate there loved it!! Last year I think they took about 12 away rotators. This place is legit and is very high on my rank list.

Did they interview you during your rotation or did you end up going back there later? Not that its an end-all be-all in my decision to rotate, but its always good info. Also what time of year did you rotate?

Sorry for the confusion... I did not rotate there but talked to people who did.... And yes rotators do go back to Tampa for one of two interview dates. I would definitely rotate there as you will also be able to get great letters..( sanders, Sagi, letson) and other big names

I am a current PGY-4. We interview all rotators. We usually have 1 interview weekend in early January we interview half of the applicants on that Friday and the other half on Saturday with a resident-only dinner on Friday evening. Because of this unique setup it would be impossible to interview when you rotated here.

The focus of our residency is strictly on education, not scut work and not mindless resident “busywork.” This ideology comes from the top down, as you will often hear our program director Dr. Doug Letson (oncology) say what matters most is the resident education. This detail cannot be overemphasized because the entire residency is designed around maximum opportunities for education.

In our program, we have about 1/3 of rotations with private community surgeons, 1/3 of rotations with Florida Orthopaedic Institute (FOI), a private group (Sanders, Sagi, Clare, Mighells, etc) that functions more academically than many academic groups, and 1/3 with USF academic attendings. This makes for a great well-rounded experience.

Scut work is minimal if at all. Each of our rotations has Physician Assistants (PA’s) paid to help take care of the floor work (dictations, rounding, consults, H&P’s and assist YOU in surgery). Keep in mind PA’s are not a threat but a GREAT help, they do not have any interest in learning to do cases but rather help you close surgical sites, help with patient positioning, retracting, etc. making your experience so much better.

Just a few of our strengths:

Trauma Rotation (Tampa General Hospital) – high volume, complex cases, as well as bread & butter cases. Plus you get to work with leaders in the field (Sanders, Sagi, Herscovici, Watson).

Peds – We do 6 weeks at Shriners (nice for seeing the rare congenital type stuff) and the remaining time (18 weeks) at All Childrens hospital (private group) where we see bread & butter peds trauma, good volume of peds scoli (computer navigated), as well as general peds ortho.

Research block – 3 months dedicated to research with NO clinical duties, that means NO call. Enormous amount of opportunities for research both clinical and biomechanical.

Joints – Work with Bernasek (high volume ~25 cases/week) and Raterman (high volume BHR’s – 3rd highest in country for BHR ~20 cases/week), and Vo (high volume ~30-35 cases/week). Plus outstanding experience at VA with joint fellowship trained attending, Markee.

Oncology – All residents agree this is one the best rotations because we learn an outstanding amount of bone radiology as well as outstanding operative techniques from our PD. Letson is an outstanding, teacher, and true personal friend. He truly cares about each and every resident. This is quite evident on a daily basis.

These are just a few of the rotations. Honestly, I can’t think of any weaknesses. We have all subspecialty rotations covered: Sports, Hand, Shoulder/Elbow, Foot/Ankle, Spine. I could go on and on about how great these rotations are as well but leave it to say if you have specific questions I will be happy to answer.

We are "required" to go to Musculoskeletal Oncology Review (MOR) every year as a group, the entire residency - course is in Key West; because Letson runs the course. Always a great time! Plus you get one USF sponsored meetings annually, plus one industry sponsored meeting annually. Also, any meeting you get an abstract accepted you get to go for free as well. Since we live in FL there is a lot of meetings right in our area, these are free as well to USF residents.

We have a great weekly didactic conferenc every Friday AM, that is subspecialty-based. This is protected time for resident education from 7-12 every Friday. We have great attendance of our attendings.

Next year, our annual cadaver dissection will be every other week with fresh frozen cadaver rather than using the embalmed cadavers that we have used for past 3 years. Also, FOI has anatomy/cadaver facilities where there are many many courses for residents and attendings that come from all around the country. All of these courses are always free to the USF residents.

We operate very early. As a PGY-2 you will be doing TKA and THA cases skin to skin with the attendings assisting. Our call system is very manageable and almost all of it except 2 rotations is home call.

We just received our RRC accreditation a few months ago for 4 years. Oh yeah, you can’t beat living in FL either. Year round nice weather, great sports, nice beaches, Disney World 1.5 hours away.

I could not think of a stronger program both with our academic experience as well as our operative experience. I am extremely happy and proud of our program.

I will be happy to answer any questions.

Paul Edwards, MD

I am a resident at USF. We usually take about 4 rotators a month (the earlier you make your request, the easier it will be to come).
We hold all interviews in January (none take place during your rotation).
In the PGY 4 class two are USF graduates, 3rd year: 1, 2nd year:2, 1st year: 1.

Among the PGY 2 class: none rotated here.
PGY 1: one rotated here.

If you have any further questions, you can pm me.

This is all the exact information I was looking for. Thanks so much!

I rotated at USF and did not get an interview......

To clarify what I posted earlier- out of both the PGY 1 & 2 classes: two residents spent time rotating with us. And yes, rotating here helps in getting an interview. Most (>90%) of rotators got an interview over the past two years (since we have been in the match)...[/quote]

and for this years intern class: 3 spent time here.

its cool i probably wouldnt have gone to my interview anyways had i gotten it....had offers at case, uab, umass, and a few other i cant remember for that day....however i was a bit surprised i didnt get an interview considering i got great feedback from the people i worked with while i was there and the residents told me they would see me in january when i left...oh well!

I think that there are three telling signs of the quality of a residency program. The first is the quality of talent that a residency attracts, the second is the ability to educate and mold that talent into capable surgeons, and the third is the ability to place those surgeons into a position of their choosing, be it as a fellows or as an attending. The past three years in the match we have recruited top talent and established a curriculum and rotation schedule with some of the better known surgeons in the country, however, given that USF is a new program we have, up until now, been unable to vouch for this final step.

In the past two weeks our three PGY-4 residents have received their match results and all three were placed into their top choice for fellowship. We had one resident apply to pediatric orthopaedics who matched to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), another resident applied for adult reconstruction and he matched to Ortho Carolina, and we had a resident apply for orthopaedic oncology who matched to Harvard.

Again, please feel free to contact us with any questions about our program. We encourage rotators here, especially given that three out of four of our incoming residents spent time with us prior to the matching process.

Stellar; congratulations -- I think I e-spoke with one of these PGY-4's before the Match. He gave me great advice, and had great things to say about your program. The more I hear about USF (and I'm hearing a lot about it recently), the better it sounds.

This is great. Thank you for the update on USF. It sounds like you are doing great things.

The immunization form for USF is a pain and made me withdraw my VSAS application for an away. I don't have varicella titers, and if I ended up being negative (despite having chicken pox 15 years ago), i'd have to wait 4 weeks to complete the series. Also, my N95 fit testing was done 15 months ago, i don't want to redo it. Let me know if I'm accepted before making me jump through all these hoops. It's ridiculous