DO programs

South Pointe Hospital, Warrensville Heights, OH
Most lifestyle friendly program out of all the programs I checked out. They start at 630 am most days! that’s almost unheard of at any ortho program. Take 2 residents a year, will go up to 3 this year but that’s still in the works. They cover two hospitals, south pointe and Hill crest. Attendings were nice, residents were chill for the most part. Spend most their 4th year at cleveland clinic, trauma out at Denver with Panorama Ortho.

Pros: If you want lifestyle in an ortho residency, you got it here at this program. Start later than medicine residents on most days. No pre-rounding for ortho students. Attendings are pretty friendly, most residents appear fairly chill. Krahe is a good guy, Hampton, the new director seems like a good guy. Mackel is a great guy. Masin is a good guy. No malignant attendings. Attendings don’t scrub for the most part, its a chief and one or two junior residents. Ton of clinic , affiliation with cleveland clinic is pretty nice.

Cons: Low case load compared to all other programs , graduate with about 1500 cases. Ton of office, most out of any other program. These guys sell their program as laid back, but its not as laid back as it appears. I thought the way they handled their interviews this year was not the best way to approach interviews. Told the students on rotations that they didn’t know when the interviews were, attendings and residents alike, meanwhile, they were calling students who didn’t rotate for interviews weeks in advance. Were not upfront with students who rotated as to how many interns they were going to take, meanwhile were calling non-rotators asking them to interview, because it was good odds with 8 interviewees for 3 spots.

Lansing:

Congrats to everyone who matched this year and good luck to those who will be applying next year. As a current resident I know how important picking the places you rotate at is. Most people only get a few out rotations and you must use them wisely.

The program in lansing is top-notch. If you train here you will be a great surgeon, without doubt. Many residents choose to do general ortho because they are comfortable with their skills and don't need fellowship training. Of course many people do fellowships and some at very top-notch places such as Beaumont joints, ortho indy trauma, Cleveland clinic joints, mayo ortho oncology, arizona spine, harborview trauma...... The program is heavily run by the senior residents but also nicely supported by over 20 fellowship trained attendings. You cover 3-4 hospitals in the area and they are currently working on a deal to allow residents in the outpt surgery center. The main two hospitals are Mclaren regional and Sparrow medical center which is a level I trauma center. You get a huge exposure to almost all specialties except foot & ankle. Out rotations include trauma at ortho indy and peds at Cincinnati childrens where you work with the biggest names in peds ortho. You will log over 4000-5000 cases before you graduate and as a senior all you do is operate. Second years run their own clinic with a senior and an attending as staff. If you don't like to work, dont bother going to lansing because you will be busy. Fracture conf is monday morning and education is every tues-fri morning after rounds. OITE review is 2 hours on thurs afternoon and once a month there is a journal club a joint conference and grand rounds. There are countless other educational workshops put on by the ortho reps such as cadaver courses, sawbone labs. Another great resource is MSU. The cadaver lab is now accessible for the ortho residents and there are research opportunities available as well. Every month all the ortho programs send their residents to detroit for a day of education lectures.

If you do a rotation here plan to work and show off your skills. Just be normal and easy to get along with and work hard. Be helpful and courteous to everyone and don't try to standout. Just be yourself. In the mornings students usually read X-rays and the students who step up to read willingly and do a good job are the ones who get noticed.

Pinnacle Health, Harrisburg PA]

Would you mind clarifying why 'gals have no chance here'? Im a woman thinking about rotating in the fall.

Also does anyone have any info on LECOM's Millcreek program? And any news on Memorial in york Pa? I talked to a program contact there who said the program is on hiatus indefinatly.

I wrote that review just after I finished my rotation. During my rotation, I felt like the residents were very tight knit and the program had a frat boys kind of a feeling. Without getting in too much details, it seemed like the residents didn't really like working with female students. Again, that's just my opinion based on what I saw.

However, since then, I heard they offered one of their spots to a female student. Not sure if that's true. I am not sure if she matched there or not. If you want to rotate there, you may wanna ask around. My impression was that it was not a very female friendly program.

Doctors Hospital Modesto:
This is a new osteopathic program at a level II trauma center in a community hospital located in central California. The program kicked off on 7/13 with four residents, two R2's and two interns, in a hospital that hosts a large allopathic family medicine program.

Pro's: DMC is a busy ER with TONS of ortho pathology that has basically been untapped until now. Despite the fact that the program has only been running for a few months, the residents at this program are by far some of the smartest and most well-read of any I saw on my auditions. The main faculty come from a diverse background of post-grad and fellowship training, and they are absolutely excited to be teaching the "young bucks." Their expectations are lofty, and if you fall short - even as a student - you will hear about it. The program is pushing for intense academic education, and Dr. Marc Trzeciak - the PD - will allow nothing to stand in the way of the daily formal teaching. Education is a solid 5d/week, with fx conference/Miller review/journal club being included in the weekly schedule. Interns here were immediately in the OR with the knife if they proved to the attending that the were prepared. There is so much surgery to be had that even with a full program (10 residents) there will not be an issue getting exposure. One of the R2's is already at ~200 cases this year if I remember correctly. As far as I know, this is the only program that has a resident run clinic, and cases booked by the resident at the clinic will be performed by that resident - whether they are an R1 or an R5. As a student, you will work hard, you will have to read TONS to function at academics each morning, you will be expected to know just about everything about the surgery you are scrubbing on and you will get yelled at if you don't - but the beauty is that if you do rise to the occasion, you will be rewarded with increased OR time/opportunity. For the residents, work hour restrictions are monitored very tightly, which is probably not a bad thing considering the volume of education the residents are expected to prepare for daily. In short, this program has the volume, the faculty enthusiasm, the academics, and the support staff to become one of the best in the county IMO.

Cons: If location is high on your list, or if you are afraid to work hard/study harder than you did in medical school, you may be less inclined to rotate at/rank this program.

Orthogate was very useful when I wanted other feedback of programs I was interested in so I wanted to chime in on my opinion on the places I auditioned/interviewed at. I encourage other students to do the same because we all know whatever information we got was very beneficial.

Riverside County Regional Medical Center

Pros: Autonomy. Autonomy. Autonomy. Definitely had the best autonomy out of all the places I’ve been at. I saw 2nd years do ankles and distal radius by themselves with only a student as a first assist and they did a pretty damn good job too. I think because of this early experience, all of their chiefs were ridiculously confident in the OR. I also rotated here last year so I was able to see two sets of 5th years and every single one of them were capable of doing anything. So if you’re someone like me who needs to actually be hands on in order to learn something, this is the ideal place because you are practically forced to do everything. Another big quality about this program was that this program controlled the entire orthopedic dept. I might value this more than other students but I like the idea that whatever orthopedic case comes through the hospital, residents will be involved with the case. The other programs I was a part of, if they were lucky enough to have a base hospital (which a few didn’t), only a certain number of attendings were part of the program so many of the cool cases that came in, residents weren’t allowed to help out. At Riverside, it's all about the residents. Yes, Riverside is stacked with trauma cases because it’s a county facility so there is no doubt that every single resident that graduates will be able to handle anything that comes through the ED. However, I also noticed that they see a great amount of other subspecialties. They have OR days devoted to hand, joints, and sports. All the residents RAVE about the out rotations they have at Kaiser for Sports, Joints, and Foot & Ankle. Unlike the base hospital, all you do here is operate. No scut. Lastly, and I think the greatest part of this program, was the collection of residents. Probably the coolest bunch of residents from what I’ve experienced. They all work extremely hard but they seem like normal people that talk to each other about normal non-ortho related stuff. Definitely people I see myself having beers with after a shift. More importantly, they look out for each other. In order for this program to run efficiently with all the cases and patients they deal with, they have to be a cohesive unit and they all practice that. Oh and their fellowship matches have been very impressive lately….UC Davis Sports, Rush Joints, UCSD Spine, Univ of Chicago Hand, Grant Trauma, San Diego Peds.

Cons: Too much clinic for me. They have full days of clinic 4 days out of the week and each shift requires at least 2 seniors and 2 juniors. And as a student, this is where the bulk of you time will be spent. They schedule at least 100+ patients a day so you can imagine the fast paced environment. However, a strength of this much clinic is that the residents learn how to be great in the clinic. They learn to properly do a physical exam, diagnose, and followup with these patients postop. As a resident it seems like youll be in clinic 2 days of the week. However as chief, you’re practically in the OR all day everyday. Lack of academics. There are didactics scheduled every morning but because of how much work there is to do, its hard for the residents to be on top of these lectures. I would say at least 2 mornings of the week are strong and these are when Dr. Schlecther and Dr. Faerber attend. But if you’re someone who wants to be part of a program where they devote a lot of time on lecturing rather than going to the OR, this place isn’t for you. Sometimes too much autonomy. It was cool to see the attendings putting full trust in some of these residents and not showing up for the case but then you wonder if having no supervision is going to start creating bad habits for the residents. Workload. 2nd year is by far the worst. However after that, the hours don’t seem to be too demanding. 3s 4s and 5s split the call so it seems like you’re just on-call (home) once a week and 1 weekend every 5 weeks. But definitely not a country club residency.