Program Review
Staff / Faculty / Chairman
Our core faculty put in a lot of time toward resident education and the program has taken great strides to make UAB a place where you can excel as a surgeon quickly.
Didactics / Teaching
The Thursday 2-5 lectures are at a convenient time. Summer and pre OITE test prep is excellent. The March Anatomy series with hands on cadaver dissection is very valuable.
Operating Experience
Very well rounded and high volume.
Clinic Experience
Nurses and Clinical care coordinators help greatly during clinic. Sometimes I would prefer to dictate my notes rather than type into the EMR, but the templates and autotext features make it very manageable.
Research Opportunities
Research is here if you want it. Only one publishable paper is required for graduation/senior research day, but you can easily publish 5+ papers in your time here. The research section is expanding and making it easier to accomplish IRB's and data mining quickly.
Residents
Very fun and hardworking group. The fellow residents make the trauma service enjoyable when you are juggling so many patients and surgical cases.
Lifestyle
Rocking climbing, mountain biking, and hiking is 10-25 minutes away.
Multiple lakes are within 45-90 mintues away for the weekends.
Multiple Deer / Bird hunting sites are 20-60 minutes away.
Multiple excellent breweries, bars, and restaurants either downtown or in the surrounding suburbs.
Location / Housing
Upscale lofts / condos available 2 minutes from the hospital or nice neighborhood houses available 5-15 minutes away.
Limitations
While in the program you will be in the call pool at different times for UAB Main trauma, Highlands Hospital, Childrens Hospital, VA Hospital. But while these hospitals are not centralized all in one building, they are no more than 1-5 blocks or 2-5 minutes away from each other given the traffic.
Overall Rotation Experience / Conclusion
UAB was the best all around program I visited. It offers high surgical volume; subsequently, you will be very well trained in virtually any orthopeadic subspecialty field you choose to pursue. I like many of the subspecialities, so I wanted a place where I could get several repetitions and operate independently without too many others scrubbed or overreaching fellow involvement. Birmingham is a great city.
I would definitely rank UAB as my #1 again if I were coming out as a medstudent.
Visit the program website and check it out yourself:
https://www.uab.edu/medicine/surgery/orthopaedics/education-training/orthopaedic-residency
