Valley Consortium for Medical Education - Orthopedic Surgery Residency

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.