What up guys, first off let me say I envy none of you, last year this was the worst. But it'll be over soon.
Anyway, my two cents on the UMKC program as I am a resident there. We have a bad reputation, our chairmen is not the warm fuzzy type that many programs have. He is very intense and very in your face and at times our program can be very insulting. But with all that said he is also a fair man, he likes things his way and as long as you do what he asks you won't have much trouble. He simply demands that you know what is going on. The rest of the program is fine and basically he built the entire program himself so even if people don't like his ways, he is a person who everyone respects. We have plenty of trauma (whoever said we lack this is crazy), we're not Cook County but KC was on the list of dangerous cities and we are an inner city hospital so do the math. We aslo have a private hospital where we do half our stuff so its a nice contrast, plus a few months a year at Children's Mercy for the peds people.
A nice thing about our program is our intern year aint that bad and we are required as interns to attend all ortho lectures twice a week in the mornings. It gets you out of the hell that is general surgery and you get good exposure to ortho early. Plus, I have been able to scrub into tons of ortho case the last few months with rotations like anasthesia and other jerk off months built into out intern year. Also, be careful of places where everyone is nice all the time because you do need some people to beat you up a little. It keeps you on your toes and hungry. Also, it makes you a good surgeron because it stops you from getting sloppy. All in all, at the time I wished I might have gone somewhere different, but I am happy here in KC. The residents in our program are a great bunch a guys and we all look out for each other, don't listen to the word on the street. I'm only about half way through intern year but thus far it's great and I'm livin the dream, any place is what you make of it.
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