Program Review
Staff / Faculty / Chairman
Chairman: Ehrlich is a legend. He is a dedicated chairman, and is still very actively involved in the department. He lectures twice a week at resident breakfast rounds, and is hilarious. He has serious orthopaedic and funding connections that he's not afriad to use them to help out the residents. Dr. DiGiovanni is the new program director. He is a young, motivated leader who will be good for the residency program. There a well-known attendings in every specialty, most of them are good teachers/mentors.
Didactics / Teaching
Good lectures. Hands on work shops. Residents travel to multiple courses. Lectures/OITE prep is comperable to other big name programs.
Operating Experience
Top notch. The 6th year likely makes these residents better with their hands than those coming from any other program-it just takes an extra year to get there! The 6th year is a trauma fellowship/junior attending year with a high volume of cases, many of them complex/high energy trauma. The operative experience is solid beginning in the 2nd year.
Clinic Experience
Residents rotate through Hasbro Childrens Hospital, the VA, a community hospital (Miriam), and Rhode Island Hospital, getting a great variety of clinical and operative experience at all of them.
Research Opportunities
Tremendous funding opportunity, world class research facilities (new very large lab being built currently), significant research rotation time during the 4 and 5 year, and some great attendings to help get projects going. They got the COBRE Grant (5yr/$11 million grant). The resident research has been very impressive over the last few years.
Residents
Great group dynamic. Fun and motivated residents, work together really well. A good mix of married and single. All help eachother out a lot. Residents have conference together daily, and are a tight group.
Lifestyle
The call schedule can be grueling at times, and the work is especially hard during trauma rotations, but it is pretty nice in general overall. The iternship is mainly general surgery and is hard compared to soem other programs, but is getting better in terms of call schedule and malignancy as compared to how it used to be. The upper levels have a relatively nice schedule. The fact is that residents here work really hard, but that is true at almost every program.
Location / Housing
Providence is a great city: lots of outdoor activities, Boston is less than an hour away, skiing in 3 hours away, NYC is 3 hours away, there is a low cost of living (for the East Coast), reasonable nightlife, good schools for kids, minimal traffic, etc
Limitations
If you just have to be out of residency in 5 years, then this place isn't for you.
Overall Rotation Experience / Conclusion
This is a top notch program. ~%50 of residents end up in academics, and the guys coming out of this program are likely the best trained in the country, largely due to the fellowship year. There is also an international rotation that just formed, with a resident heading to Africa this year, with lots of funding for anyone interested in internation orthopaedics.
