Review Detail

5.4 2 10
Hot
New York August 28, 2007 19932
Great program

Program Review

Staff / Faculty / Chairman
Phenomenal staff who care about teaching and are leaders in their fields. National powerhouse in hand, sports, foot and ankle. New chairman last year has made great changes and is a huge advocate for residents.
Didactics / Teaching
Changes this year to improve didactics; "intern month" with daily instructional lectures for interns; throughout the year there are also daily lectures grouped by specialty and led mostly by faculty. Thursday afternoons have labs at the "wet" cadaver lab with protected time for residents, and bimonthly cadaver dissections. JBJS journal club monthly with the chair, Dr. Rubery, and specialty journal clubs occur most months for foot and ankle or pediatrics and usually hosted by faculty at their homes.
Operating Experience
Early and often. 2000+ cases, program reports ~2400 which seems feasible. Two hospitals about 1 mile apart plus outpatient surgical center; Strong Memorial has trauma, tumor, spine, some hand/sports, inpatient foot and ankle cases, and inpatient shoulder/elbow cases. Highland Hospital is primarily joints and geriatric fractures, with comanagement of all geriatric patients by geriatric hospitalists. First assist only at the surgical center and 1 on 1 with attendings early; by PGY3 doing most cases; by PGY4 taking junior residents through cases or doing more complex cases with the attendings.
Clinic Experience
Clinical experience largely second to operative experience; basically default to clinic on days when no ORs for a given service. Exception is joints, sports, and foot and ankle which have resident/fellow clinics for a half day weekly. Consults at Strong Hospital (Level 1 trauma center) seen by a PGY2 on day/night float system with PGY4s/5s on home call only coming in for operative cases overnight. Highland Hospital ED consults covered by PGY3s and PGY4s on home call; at worst call averages about 1 in 6.
Research Opportunities
Plentiful and unlimited. Required to complete one project during residency but virtually everyone does more. From biomechanics to cadaver studies, basic science or database-driven projects available. Recently clinics have started collecting PROMIS data on patient outcomes and this should provide a further avenue for studies. Rochester usually ranks near the top in NIH funding which largely funnels to the Center for Musculoskeletal Research; plentiful research opportunities through CMSR. Department will fund trips to major conferences for accepted works.
Residents
7 residents per class; 6 match into 5-year program and 1 matches into 6-year program with research between PGY2 and 3. Great mix of residents. Most residents are married or married by the end of residency but there are some single residents and plenty of a social scene in Rochester. A few residents have kids. Fellows in hand, sports, foot and ankle, spine, and trauma who rarely interfere with the resident experience and largely fill voids in OR coverage.
Lifestyle
Very easy to live very well even on one resident's salary; sports are large here with professional (minor league) soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and baseball. Residents work as team physicians for local high schools, colleges, and most of the minor league sports teams. Plenty of bars if that's your scene, and a lot of young people (U of Rochester, RIT, Nazareth College, St John Fisher, MCC). If you have kids, home to nationally recognized Strong Museum of Play. Huge weekly public market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, big food truck scene in the summer, and festivals almost every weekend in the summer. Skiing about 45 minutes and tons of wineries within an hour (Fingerlakes).
Location / Housing
My impressions of Rochester before moving here were largely from murder investigations on "First 48." While there is an active gun and knife club in part of the city which keeps the trauma service interesting, you'll likely never venture to those areas. Rochester's suburbs are safe, affluent, and extremely affordable (3-4 bedroom house, 2000+ sq ft for
Limitations
Only real limitation is presence of a trauma fellowship; this is the one area where the fellow can be an impediment to the residents as they tend to take most of the larger trauma cases (pelvic/tab fractures). However, unless you're doing a trauma fellowship, you probably won't be fixing those in practice anyway and there are ample opportunities for treating hip fractures, ankles, etc where the trauma fellow is not involved. Joints program is repopulating with a recent new hire but have lost a few joints faculty in the past two years; not a limitation on joints operative volume though as there is still such a huge volume of joints cases available that it's hard to get to joints clinic.
Overall Rotation Experience / Conclusion
Overall a great program with tremendous resources, faculty that care about resident development, and a really great place to live for 5 years.

Qualification

I am a current resident of this program.
Date of Rotation
2015
LN
Top 500 Reviewer
Report this review Was this review helpful? 0 0

Comments