Review Detail
8.3 4 10
Florida
August 14, 2007
14232
Well Rounded Program Quickly Rising to the Top
(Updated: May 31, 2016)
Residency is now Officially USF/FOI residency
Program Review
Staff / Faculty / Chairman
Chairman: Roy Sanders—Editor for JOT, nationally renowned in trauma literature (i.e. Sanders classification), very powerful, driven individual--became chairman of the residency in 2015. CEO of Florida Orthopaedic Institute--the largest private ortho group in the state of Florida, and therefore doesn't HAVE to be the chair but genuinely WANTS to educate residents and is dedicated to the program.
Program Director: Hassan Mir—Editor for the online OTA Newsletter, an up-and-coming name in trauma, moved from Vanderbilt to USF for the program director position. He is young and energetic and runs a tight ship on the trauma service, great educator and mentor.
Staff: mostly private, good mix of young and old, Florida Orthopaedic Institute, choose to work with the residents, all of them are personally and professionally successful and most are enthusiastic about resident education. Even the ortho trauma service is run by trauma guys that are part of Florida Orthopaedic Institute--a very unique situation where residents learn a lot about private practice. A lot of very young and enthusiastic attendings that allow residents to operate and love to teach. We have 2-4 attendings in every specialty that all trained at different places around the country and the discussions we have during our educational conferences are invaluable because each of them are experts and they talk about different nuances in all aspects of their specialty that you can only get from having breadth in your faculty in each specialty.
Program Director: Hassan Mir—Editor for the online OTA Newsletter, an up-and-coming name in trauma, moved from Vanderbilt to USF for the program director position. He is young and energetic and runs a tight ship on the trauma service, great educator and mentor.
Staff: mostly private, good mix of young and old, Florida Orthopaedic Institute, choose to work with the residents, all of them are personally and professionally successful and most are enthusiastic about resident education. Even the ortho trauma service is run by trauma guys that are part of Florida Orthopaedic Institute--a very unique situation where residents learn a lot about private practice. A lot of very young and enthusiastic attendings that allow residents to operate and love to teach. We have 2-4 attendings in every specialty that all trained at different places around the country and the discussions we have during our educational conferences are invaluable because each of them are experts and they talk about different nuances in all aspects of their specialty that you can only get from having breadth in your faculty in each specialty.
Didactics / Teaching
Didactics/Teaching: 2 hours with beer and food served every Tuesday night, then 2 hours with breakfast served every Friday morning. Followed an the AAOS CORR book for curriculum. 6 Anatomy labs through the year with fresh frozen cadavers, and other cadavers available upon request.
Operating Experience
Operating Experience: Most operative experience on trauma, hand, joints, and VA where you have done 30-50 primary total hips/knees from skin to skin by the time you are a 3, 10-15 distal radius fractures and fix other common forearm fractures as a junior resident, and have done 10-20 tibial/femoral nails as a junior resident, also I had done skin to skin ~20 shoulder scopes and ~20 knee scopes as a junior level resident. This is just a highlight, but operative experience is good and we are actively working every year to make it better.
Clinic Experience
Clinical Experience: These are high-volume private practice guys that see anywhere from 60-90 patients per day in clinic. So you see everything. A lot of referrals from around the central to western part of the state, FOI is well-regarded by orthopaedists in the region and they get a lot of academic-type, complicated cases in addition to the bread and butter.
Research Opportunities
Research: You can look up Foundation for Orthopaedic Research and Education (FORE), which is a non-profit organization that FOI created. I could probably write a whole page on how amazing FORE is. They have a biomechanical lab and staff and everything else needed to make a research machine. They have CME courses throughout the year all over the country and when the course is at FORE labs, the residents usually can go for free (and if there are any cadavers left over, we have the opportunity to dissect or use them for research) Additionally, the trauma guys have a database that can be mined with questions for retrospective clinical research. You can do as much or as little as you want with regards to research, but the opportunities are endless and the support staff is there if you want to publish a ton. Plus Sanders is the editor of JOT and knows the ropes in how to write quality papers that get into quality journals.
Residents
Residents: the best, hands down, and the main reason why I came here (Of course I am biased). Good mix of single and married, married with kids. 4 per year. 2 females, but very female friendly program. All the residents are down-to-earth people, who enjoy spending time with one another and hang out a lot outside of work, but work hard when they need to. Love this group and will miss them dearly when I move on.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle: busy, but its residency. You put in most of your time as a 2 and a 3, 4th year is pretty chill. 5th year—no in-house call, you only go in to operate. Additionally, we all help each other out if there are vacations that someone wants to go on, etc, if you want to go somewhere—Italy, Spain, Brazil, Bahamas (yes we have residents that have all gone to these locations in the past year), we will make sure your schedule works. We have an annual deep sea fishing tournament, golf tournament and then a bunch of socials throughout the year.
Location / Housing
Location: Tampa is a great city, not for “big city” people per se. It’s a small city, easy to get around, light traffic. MLB, NHL (probably the biggest sport in the city as far as fans go), and NFL teams. Named in the top five in the country for number of microbreweries. A lot of new restaurants are popping up and there is a major renovation going on in Downtown. Very clean downtown, and very safe. Low crime rate. And then, of course, Disney world and all of the Orlando attractions are an easy 1hr drive away.Probably half of the residents own houses or condos, some live in high rises downtown. Very affordable. Plus, you live within an hour of some of the best beaches in the world (many have been named on the travel channel top ten in the country.
Limitations
No spine trauma call, so we only get cold spine trauma (this may change in the future). Rotations are spread out. One is in St. Pete (~30 min drive), one is in Wesley Chapel (~45 min drive), but those are only 3 month rotations.
Overall Rotation Experience / Conclusion
Overall Experience: I am going to try to not be biased, but of course I am. I think this is a great residency education and the more I progress through residency, the more I appreciate it. We are making great strides in improving aspects of our residency that are weak. But really, the reason I came here is because it is a very well-rounded program already. The things that were important to me were all checked off my list: good research capabilities with support staff and facilities to accomplish as much or as little research as desired, multiple faculty at each position, solid operative experience, team-like atmosphere in the residency, good resident-attending relationships (we actually have fun together) and a great place to live if you’re single or if you want to raise a family.
Qualification
I am a current resident of this program.
Date of Rotation
2013 to 2016
AA
Ashley Ali
Top 100 Reviewer
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