Didn't apply to Hamot but did interview at Geisinger:

Very nice hospital and the surrounding community is beautiful and very quiet. You can live around the hospital and the residents were pointing out their houses from windows in the hospital - less than 5 min drive to work, no traffic whatsoever. Danville is very small city in central PA with no nightlife or anything exciting. Very rural community with low cost of living?can buy a house easily and 9 of 10 residents owned a house, the other could afford to but decided not to. You get excellent well-rounded training. You start operating as an intern and are first assist on most cases. They do a lot of operating and you cannot beat the hands-on experience. Residents were racking up over 2000 cases during the 5 yrs. Excellent training. Call is q7 even as an intern?(q8 your chief year) and it?s HOME call ALL 5 YEARS!!! The residents are all pretty cool people - only 2 per year. In the end, I ranked it 10 out of 15 - it's a great program but it?s tough to live in Danville if you?re single with no family?and most of the residents do have a family and they do ask you during your interview. Had no qualms about the program itself, actually loved it. You just have to muster up the will to live there for 5 years. If you do a rotation there your chances increase dramatically if they like you. It is more important to them that they like you and you WANT to go there than if you're some stud on paper. I'll tell you that if you have a family and don't mind living in a small town environment, there's no program out there better for you than Geisinger.

Hope this helps

Yo, some more about Geisinger

From being up there alot, I can tell you that you get the training of being at a big academic, university-type medical center WITHOUT having to put up with the ratrace of being at a real one in the city somewhere. As far as I know, the ortho Chair there is Harvard-trained and very into teaching. EVERYONE there is super nice, including attendings and all hospital staff. Since it's such a huge medical center, you'll see a ton of trauma from all over northeastern PA and New York, except instead of GSWs you may see farming accidents.

Also, you can check out the brand-new entertainment spot that attracts the men-folk known as "Mustang Sally's" )

Really cool place. :pimp:

As several posts about community programs have popped up, I wanted to bring this thread back to the top. For personal reasons, I am very interested in the Geisinger program. I was wondering if anyone else can add to the glowing reviews above.

Also, I know that Geisinger is affiliated with one or two of the Philly med schools. I am especially interested in hearing from people who have spent time there on rotations (ortho or otherwise). Specifically, I know that it has been mentioned several times on this board that ortho programs and residents all tend to be very good because the applicant pool is so strong. However, I was wondering if/how the residency experience is affected when residents in other depts (i.e., g-surg, er, med) might not be as strong as their counterparts in major academic centers.

Finally, any idea how Geisinger's residents do with regard to fellowships?

Thanks.

I remember from my interview that one of the chiefs was headed to Duke for Joints (or was it sports?)...he was headed for Duke either way.

As far as strength of residents in other departments, I don't think it would affect your training. You may have to deal with some idiot ER residents calling you down for something stupid, but all in all I wouldn't let that affect my rank list.

The 2 philly schools affiliated with Geisinger are Jefferson and PCOM. Med students do rotations there.

More positives on Geisinger -- you spend a few months as a 3rd year at AI Dupont Childrens in Deleware for peds...it's a great hospital with as strong a peds ortho department as anywhere in the country.

Another perk I noticed was that each resident had his little work space...a nice cubicle for work/study/etc. The only other program i interviewed at that had this was Orlando Regional. It's nice to have your own "little office" as a resident.

It's the little things that make your life better.