Are all GME departments completely inept?

[Tragal Pointer]

Question in title. Just wondering if its my program or if all GME dept's suck.

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[Raryn]

Probably.

 

[GoSpursGo]

More or less

 

[Apollyon]

Question in title. Just wondering if its my program or if all GME dept's suck.

They're like EMRs - "It's not which one is best, but, which one sucks the least".

 

[KnuxNole]

If they all suck, how do we make them "not suck"?

 

[Apollyon]

If they all suck, how do we make them "not suck"?

90% of errors are "operator error". Short story? You get what you pay for.

Alternately, why? By definition, the people affected, directly and exactly, are transient. There is no pressure from any angle to improve anything. If there were notable candidates to notable institutions who went public and said, "I'm going to be MD/PhD from Harvard, but I'm not going to Duke for residency due to the GME office", that might be the only way change might get some traction.

 

[NuttyEngDude]

Question in title. Just wondering if its my program or if all GME dept's suck.

If they all suck, how do we make them "not suck"?

The problem is that they are not a revenue generating organization and are therefore overhead. They are by nature and rewarded by propagating bureaucracy.

 

[Iamnew2]

Question in title. Just wondering if its my program or if all GME dept's suck.

Pretty much.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

I would expand this to almost all departments of any type, not just GME.

 

[KnuxNole]

I mean, I would imagine a strong GME office would want to be competent for the sake of maintaining a strong residency program and the overall satisifcation of the trainees, which is who they are serving.

 

[Apollyon]

I mean, I would imagine a strong GME office would want to be competent for the sake of maintaining a strong residency program and the overall satisifcation of the trainees, which is who they are serving.

For what? The bar is pretty low for what they have to do, from the trainee side. As long as a resident or fellow gets their paycheck, and the GME office has the right documents ready to sign, that's about it. (From the GME side, I'm not saying that it's easy.) A lot more of the germane paperwork is managed by the specific residency or fellowship coordinator.

 

[sylvanthus]

I mean, I would imagine a strong GME office would want to be competent for the sake of maintaining a strong residency program and the overall satisifcation of the trainees, which is who they are serving.

Trainee satisfcation doesnt mean jack when its so hard to leave/transfer. Dont need to satisfy modern day slave laborers.

 

[killerleaf]

The GME office is also where job cuts happen, in order to save a residency slot. At one time, there were 7 people in our GME office: The DIO, the Director, a finance person, an IT person, and HR person and two "general help however I can" person. Now, there are 4. But we were able to save 2 residency slots. It is easy to get "burned out" when everything is dumped on you, with no help. However, I do network with others, and I honestly believe that most of my counterparts do the best they can with what they have. Onboarding can be like dragon slaying...getting HR to realize that normal processes will not work, residents and fellows are special. Getting things setup ready for you day one is a concept that a lot of the HR/IT/EPIC people cannot grasp, no matter how often it is explained. We try, we really do...but so much is out of our hands.

 

[Iamnew2]

The GME office is also where job cuts happen, in order to save a residency slot. At one time, there were 7 people in our GME office: The DIO, the Director, a finance person, an IT person, and HR person and two "general help however I can" person. Now, there are 4. But we were able to save 2 residency slots. It is easy to get "burned out" when everything is dumped on you, with no help. However, I do network with others, and I honestly believe that most of my counterparts do the best they can with what they have. Onboarding can be like dragon slaying...getting HR to realize that normal processes will not work, residents and fellows are special. Getting things setup ready for you day one is a concept that a lot of the HR/IT/EPIC people cannot grasp, no matter how often it is explained. We try, we really do...but so much is out of our hands.

We had a staff member at my residency program who was not in GME, but in the employee health/vaccination dept. and she always had lots of attitude. She was super unhelpful and difficult and apparently one of the residents threw a fit because since she was clueless, she would be like no you are 5 minutes too early to read a TB test or 3 minutes too late, non-sense like that, etc. One of the residents threw a fit don't know the exact details but apparently she was made to wait for a long time despite her showing up for her appt timely and she complained that as a physician needing to take care of patients she should be given priority. Anyways this worker apparently didn't realize that residents are DOCTORS! how clueless can people be? But yes I agree with the sentiment that many people in HR/IT, etc even those who work at training programs don't realize that resident stuff tends to be different from the rest of the employee typical protocol. Frustrating.

 

[Sushirolls]

The key to GME office is going in person. Not sending emails, and talking with people. Nicely.
More likely to get things done.

 

[Member10billion]

My program coordinator doesn't know what the full name of my specialty is (PM&R) or what we do and she's been lead coordinator for 5 years... she thought we were "pain medicine and rehab." What is medical education coming to when the leaders don't even know what you are?!

 

[Dral]

The key to GME office is going in person. Not sending emails, and talking with people. Nicely.
More likely to get things done.

....has been my approach ever since medical school. When I was on my surgery rotation at a VA in med school other folks were low key amazed how I got stuff done. It was because I happened upon someone who basically knew the hospital inside and out. I would always go ask her (nicely) when I had a question about getting something done.