Hello!
To any applicants that are applying to Montefiore's GPR program, here is my experience:
DISCLAIMER! this is just my personal experience. i am sure everyone's experience is different.
you will be matched into 1 of 4 **official** sites = Blondell, Prospect, Broadway & Wakefield (used to be Schiff)
[i say **official**, because if you have connections, there are residents who asked to be matched to Centennial, where it is a nicer clinic as well as residents there somehow are allowed to avoid doing rotations]
you will be asked to rank all 4 clinics (my personal ranking: 1. Blondell 2. Prospect 3. Broadway 4. Wakefield)
i can only speak for Blondell, since I was matched there.
Attending: Dr. Baskas is amazing. Couldn't have asked for a better first mentor straight out of dental school. He has a mellow personality and is always giving constructive criticism. He rarely (or never) gets angry and always doesn't make you feel bad about asking dumb questions or making mistakes.
Example: I broke a post drill in the canal. Dr. Baskas just calmly said "It's okay. Just try using a cavitron to vibrate it out". Then after the appt ended, proceeded to say "Good job!"
He is knowledgeable in essentially everything. Although he may be old school with some of his techniques, but his techniques works.
Assistants: umm...probably the worst thing about Blondell. Do not expect 4-handed dentistry all the time. They are short of assistants, on top of that, the assistants are very lazy. There has been days where there are no assistants on the floors. So you are expected to take your own x-rays, setup & turnover your cubicle. Assistants are nice people, but just very lazy people.
Hygienist: there is a hygienist here. BUT during the 1 year I was here, I probably only saw her a total of 2.5-3 months.
1. she loves to have her breaks. she could be eating her 5th meal of the day in the break room, but still have 2-3 patients waiting for her.
2. she is very slow. her hygiene appts will probably be 1.5 hours per patients. Thus, when she is backed up, she dumps her patients on the residents to pick up after her.
3. she comes in late and loves to leave on time. she will leave early or on time and leave all her patients for the residents to see.
4. she always takes sick days / vacation days / etc, hence why I barely saw her in clinic.
[i have heard that other sites don't have to do any hygiene at all]
Procedures: in the beginning of the year, clinic was a bit slow. But it was understandable (at least for me). A group of 13 of us (because no one was on rotation yet) was sharing all the patients for the day, so it led to seeing maybe 2-3 patients a day. But once people started going on rotations, it definitely got busy. Instead of 13 residents, there was probably 5-7 residents. It got so busy that I wouldn't even have time to get a lunch break.
be ready to do lots of recalls (and maybe cleanings). But REMEMEBER, if you can't make good treatment plans, how are you going to do all the other procedures. Dentistry all starts with treatment planning.
there is also a lot of restorative. Dr Baskas may ask you to do amalgam fillings every once in a blue moon, depending on isolation and how big or deep the filling is.
there is also a good handful of crowns and root canals. Dr. Baskas really tries not to refer out RCTs unless he is having trouble himself.
there are some bridges here and there. The limitation is that if insurance is going to pay for the bridge. If the insurance doesn't pay for the bridge, implants are way cheaper than bridges ($1900 ish implant vs $3200 bridge). So if patient is completely paying out of pocket, patient tends to lean towards bridges.
there is so much dentures, you will be so competent by the time you leave.
implant restorations are the best part of Blondell. Because the GP at Blondell is connected to the OS side, every single implant case that OS does, immediately gets sent to GP here at Blondell. This includes single implant restorations, overdentures, as well as hybrids. Although hybrids are hard to come by, overdentures come through here and there. OS may place an implant, and send the patient to GP the same day for immediate implant provisional restoration. Thus, implants are more commonly seen at Blondell than bridges. [other sites may have more bridge cases, since they do not have an OS clinic that are referring cases to them]
extractions are a hit or miss. It is really dependent on your residents. Because Blondell is connected to OS, the front desk loves to just give the extractions to OS. But you can always do as many extractions as you like or you always have the options of giving it to OS.
here a quick snippet about Wakefield (since I got to do my endo rotation there, so I got to interact with the GP attendings & assistants there)
Attendings: There is Dr. Castanaro & Dr. Graber (and I think Dr. Bondarev is transferring there = he's great, so I don't have much to say about him).
Dr. Castanaro is the type of attending that loves to rush you through every procedure. You will learn every single bad habit, if you learn from him. He will literally say "who wants to do a crown prep in 40 minutes? I want to leave by 2:30pm" and rush you through a crown prep. He is the perfect example of giving terrible quality dentistry, but patients love him because he is great at socializing. Even his instagram @castanaro_dental_office, he will post below standard of care work, but be completely proud of it. I have even watched him crown prep #6-11 in 15 minutes. After I took a look, margins were terrible, plenty of undercuts, caries were left, so many other problems. Personally, this is not the type of attending I want to learn from. Once you learn bad habits, its impossible to unlearn.
Dr. Graber is just a very interesting character. He is also very old school as well. I didn't interact much with him, so I don't have much to say about him either.
Assistants: The assistants here will set up & tear down the cubicle for you as well as take x-rays for you. BUT all of them have attitude and are so lazy. They will be facetiming the entire day. There will be no 4-handed dentistry. If you ask them for instruments or other stuff, because they forgot to set it up, they will give you attitude. If you ask them to retake an x-ray because it was a bad x-ray, they will give you attitude. Just a lot of lazy assistants with attitude.
general summary of the program:
rotations: 3 weeks total OS (1 week at a time), 3 weeks internal medicine, 1 month endo, 1 month OR, 2 weeks anesthesia
- OS = great rotation. you can do as much as you want, to as little as you want. they won't force you to do anything (perfect for those who avoid anything OS related). I personally wanted to learn as much as I could, so I was able to do everything from simple / surgical extractions to socket preservation to alveoloplasty to implant uncovering to placing IVs for IV sedations. You will also need to do consults for extractions, implants treatment plans, or anything else. OS residents are super nice, as well as the attendings.
- internal medicine IM = complete waste of time. the attendings there don't even acknowledge you. It feels like they don't even want you to be there. It is like "you're a dentist, why are you even here" type of atmosphere. So just grab your stickers for the day for attendance and leave and have the rest of the day to yourself.
- endodontics = (used to be at Wakefield, as of 2022, will be at Schiff). The endo attending, Dr Genser, is super nice and knowledgeable. But essentially, you're there to assist the endo residents/PGY-2 endo fellows. You might get lucky enough to do a couple of cases, but the endo residents barely have enough cases of their own.
- operation room OR = semi-chill rotation. wednesdays & thursdays are the only days you get to go into the OR. 2 patients on wednesdays and 2 patients on thursday. the rest of the days, you are in charge of 1. seeing patients to see if they qualify for the OR (as well as giving them OR paperwork) 2. calling patients to ensure that all their necessary paperwork is in for their OR appt 3. calling patients after their OR appt for follow up. It is hard to say how long you will stay in the OR per case. Some cases are easy (or recall patients) so patient may only need a cleaning with a couple fillings. Other cases are hard and long (6+ hours) so patient may need full mouth extractions or other work.
- anesthesia = another waste of time rotation. You go into the OR at 7am, see the intubation, grab your attendance sticker and leave. You will probably be out of the OR by 8am and then you have the rest of the day off to yourself. Granted if you like, you can always stay to watch the rest of the surgery (some interesting ones are breast reduction, liposuction, thyroid surgery). Other than that, its another rotation that is not really helpful in terms of the way Montefiore structures it.
on-call: 1x per month (maybe 2x if youre unlucky). Weekdays - 5pm-8pm. Weekends & Holidays - 8am - 8am
there are 3 hospitals. Moses, Wakefield & Weiler. If you get paged to Wakefield or Weiler, you can take the Uber from the hospital or housing, and you will be reimbursed. There are on-call rooms.
you will see anything from infection/swelling to lacerations to alveolar ridge fractures.
CLINICALLY, Montefiore is not a bad option. It is a program where you can do as much as you want to learn. If you are willing to push yourself and learn, it is a program that can provide. If you just want to cruise by, this program can also do that. It is probably the least intense in terms of on-call.
HOWEVER, the thing that makes Montefiore SUCK & SICK TO MY STOMACH is the program director & administration.
Dr Newsome & her secretary / administration Aggie is the laziest people I have even seen in my life.
You would think, that after running a program for so many years, you would have figured out by now a system to run the program. You would figured out what works and what doesn't work.
1. from the very beginning, they would give us onboarding things to do. The problem is, they would tell us things super last minute or add new onboarding things to do and give a deadline that is so unreasonable. For example, 2 weeks before the program starts, they send out an email saying "Oh, you need to get fit tested for N95 next week". Great! Now I have to change my flight to an earlier flight, because they added a new thing for me to do.
2. no official orientation was given. No one taught us anything. No one tells you where to report to rotations, or what needs to be done. You honestly have to learn as you go. The attendings do their best to ease you in, but anything outside of the clinic site, they probably don't know.
3. vacation weeks. You get a total of 4 vacation weeks. first 3 is assigned, the 4th one you get to choose which week you want. HOWEVER, Dr. Newsome did not tell us anything on how to let her know what weeks we can get off or when to tell her, etc. NOTHING. For example, in the beginning of the residency (like in August), I emailed Newsome, when can I start requesting for my 4th quarter vacation, because my parents want to come and visit. She emails back "4th quarter vacation is open". Great! 2 weeks later, I email her "I would like to have XXX week off". She emails back "I have to wait until the end of the 3rd quarter for 4th quarter vacation requests". I email back saying "In the previous email in August, you told me I could request right now. Because you told me that I could request now, my parents already bought tickets to come visit me from out of the country. Why is there NOW a sudden change when I asked you earlier for clarification? I don't think it is acceptable that I was told one thing, but now that I am actually requesting for my vacation, you won't let me." Then she replies "It seems that no good deed goes unpunished". WTF! What does that mean? Fine, so I wait until near the end of 3rd quarter to request again my vacation week. I email her again, but replies back. So I decided to call her. Newsome picks up and I explain to her my situation that my parents are coming from out of the country and I really need this vacation week to spend with my parents. She replies "I don't understand why your parents are even coming when the program is ending in 3 months". In the heat of the moment, I didn't talk back because I really needed the vacation week off, but that was a VERY UNNECESSARY AND RUDE COMMENT. 1. you said that I could request in the beginning of the residency. (and shouldn't it be first come first serve anyways??? if someone is responsible enough to request early enough, they should be able to get it off. How hard can it be? 2. you can't say that my parents aren't allowed to come, because I am almost finishing residency. That is my parents you are talking about. 3. haven't you ran the program long enough to figure out a system to manage vacation weeks?
4. it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to get in touch with Dr. Newsome or Aggie. You can email them 1000x and they will not respond. But if they want something from you, they demand that you respond to them immediately. Not only that, they have terrible work ethics. My UBER reimbursement from being on-call took over 6 months before I was reimbursed, because they can't do their job right. I would ask the reimbursement office when I can get my reimbursement funds, they said they never received anything from Aggie. Both Newsome and Aggie don't know how to run a program.
At this point, I am sure I can continually nitpick on things, but these are just some stuff that not only I have experience, but similar experiences of other coresidents.
But like I said, if you only look at the clinic aspect of Montefiore, it's not bad. You can learn as much as you want. You get as much as you put in. But if you put the entire program into prospective, especially with the way the program director and her secretary runs things, you will most definitely be frustrated and you might be better off elsewhere.
To any applicants that are applying to Montefiore's GPR program, here is my experience:
DISCLAIMER! this is just my personal experience. i am sure everyone's experience is different.
you will be matched into 1 of 4 **official** sites = Blondell, Prospect, Broadway & Wakefield (used to be Schiff)
[i say **official**, because if you have connections, there are residents who asked to be matched to Centennial, where it is a nicer clinic as well as residents there somehow are allowed to avoid doing rotations]
you will be asked to rank all 4 clinics (my personal ranking: 1. Blondell 2. Prospect 3. Broadway 4. Wakefield)
i can only speak for Blondell, since I was matched there.
Attending: Dr. Baskas is amazing. Couldn't have asked for a better first mentor straight out of dental school. He has a mellow personality and is always giving constructive criticism. He rarely (or never) gets angry and always doesn't make you feel bad about asking dumb questions or making mistakes.
Example: I broke a post drill in the canal. Dr. Baskas just calmly said "It's okay. Just try using a cavitron to vibrate it out". Then after the appt ended, proceeded to say "Good job!"
He is knowledgeable in essentially everything. Although he may be old school with some of his techniques, but his techniques works.
Assistants: umm...probably the worst thing about Blondell. Do not expect 4-handed dentistry all the time. They are short of assistants, on top of that, the assistants are very lazy. There has been days where there are no assistants on the floors. So you are expected to take your own x-rays, setup & turnover your cubicle. Assistants are nice people, but just very lazy people.
Hygienist: there is a hygienist here. BUT during the 1 year I was here, I probably only saw her a total of 2.5-3 months.
1. she loves to have her breaks. she could be eating her 5th meal of the day in the break room, but still have 2-3 patients waiting for her.
2. she is very slow. her hygiene appts will probably be 1.5 hours per patients. Thus, when she is backed up, she dumps her patients on the residents to pick up after her.
3. she comes in late and loves to leave on time. she will leave early or on time and leave all her patients for the residents to see.
4. she always takes sick days / vacation days / etc, hence why I barely saw her in clinic.
[i have heard that other sites don't have to do any hygiene at all]
Procedures: in the beginning of the year, clinic was a bit slow. But it was understandable (at least for me). A group of 13 of us (because no one was on rotation yet) was sharing all the patients for the day, so it led to seeing maybe 2-3 patients a day. But once people started going on rotations, it definitely got busy. Instead of 13 residents, there was probably 5-7 residents. It got so busy that I wouldn't even have time to get a lunch break.
be ready to do lots of recalls (and maybe cleanings). But REMEMEBER, if you can't make good treatment plans, how are you going to do all the other procedures. Dentistry all starts with treatment planning.
there is also a lot of restorative. Dr Baskas may ask you to do amalgam fillings every once in a blue moon, depending on isolation and how big or deep the filling is.
there is also a good handful of crowns and root canals. Dr. Baskas really tries not to refer out RCTs unless he is having trouble himself.
there are some bridges here and there. The limitation is that if insurance is going to pay for the bridge. If the insurance doesn't pay for the bridge, implants are way cheaper than bridges ($1900 ish implant vs $3200 bridge). So if patient is completely paying out of pocket, patient tends to lean towards bridges.
there is so much dentures, you will be so competent by the time you leave.
implant restorations are the best part of Blondell. Because the GP at Blondell is connected to the OS side, every single implant case that OS does, immediately gets sent to GP here at Blondell. This includes single implant restorations, overdentures, as well as hybrids. Although hybrids are hard to come by, overdentures come through here and there. OS may place an implant, and send the patient to GP the same day for immediate implant provisional restoration. Thus, implants are more commonly seen at Blondell than bridges. [other sites may have more bridge cases, since they do not have an OS clinic that are referring cases to them]
extractions are a hit or miss. It is really dependent on your residents. Because Blondell is connected to OS, the front desk loves to just give the extractions to OS. But you can always do as many extractions as you like or you always have the options of giving it to OS.
here a quick snippet about Wakefield (since I got to do my endo rotation there, so I got to interact with the GP attendings & assistants there)
Attendings: There is Dr. Castanaro & Dr. Graber (and I think Dr. Bondarev is transferring there = he's great, so I don't have much to say about him).
Dr. Castanaro is the type of attending that loves to rush you through every procedure. You will learn every single bad habit, if you learn from him. He will literally say "who wants to do a crown prep in 40 minutes? I want to leave by 2:30pm" and rush you through a crown prep. He is the perfect example of giving terrible quality dentistry, but patients love him because he is great at socializing. Even his instagram @castanaro_dental_office, he will post below standard of care work, but be completely proud of it. I have even watched him crown prep #6-11 in 15 minutes. After I took a look, margins were terrible, plenty of undercuts, caries were left, so many other problems. Personally, this is not the type of attending I want to learn from. Once you learn bad habits, its impossible to unlearn.
Dr. Graber is just a very interesting character. He is also very old school as well. I didn't interact much with him, so I don't have much to say about him either.
Assistants: The assistants here will set up & tear down the cubicle for you as well as take x-rays for you. BUT all of them have attitude and are so lazy. They will be facetiming the entire day. There will be no 4-handed dentistry. If you ask them for instruments or other stuff, because they forgot to set it up, they will give you attitude. If you ask them to retake an x-ray because it was a bad x-ray, they will give you attitude. Just a lot of lazy assistants with attitude.
general summary of the program:
rotations: 3 weeks total OS (1 week at a time), 3 weeks internal medicine, 1 month endo, 1 month OR, 2 weeks anesthesia
- OS = great rotation. you can do as much as you want, to as little as you want. they won't force you to do anything (perfect for those who avoid anything OS related). I personally wanted to learn as much as I could, so I was able to do everything from simple / surgical extractions to socket preservation to alveoloplasty to implant uncovering to placing IVs for IV sedations. You will also need to do consults for extractions, implants treatment plans, or anything else. OS residents are super nice, as well as the attendings.
- internal medicine IM = complete waste of time. the attendings there don't even acknowledge you. It feels like they don't even want you to be there. It is like "you're a dentist, why are you even here" type of atmosphere. So just grab your stickers for the day for attendance and leave and have the rest of the day to yourself.
- endodontics = (used to be at Wakefield, as of 2022, will be at Schiff). The endo attending, Dr Genser, is super nice and knowledgeable. But essentially, you're there to assist the endo residents/PGY-2 endo fellows. You might get lucky enough to do a couple of cases, but the endo residents barely have enough cases of their own.
- operation room OR = semi-chill rotation. wednesdays & thursdays are the only days you get to go into the OR. 2 patients on wednesdays and 2 patients on thursday. the rest of the days, you are in charge of 1. seeing patients to see if they qualify for the OR (as well as giving them OR paperwork) 2. calling patients to ensure that all their necessary paperwork is in for their OR appt 3. calling patients after their OR appt for follow up. It is hard to say how long you will stay in the OR per case. Some cases are easy (or recall patients) so patient may only need a cleaning with a couple fillings. Other cases are hard and long (6+ hours) so patient may need full mouth extractions or other work.
- anesthesia = another waste of time rotation. You go into the OR at 7am, see the intubation, grab your attendance sticker and leave. You will probably be out of the OR by 8am and then you have the rest of the day off to yourself. Granted if you like, you can always stay to watch the rest of the surgery (some interesting ones are breast reduction, liposuction, thyroid surgery). Other than that, its another rotation that is not really helpful in terms of the way Montefiore structures it.
on-call: 1x per month (maybe 2x if youre unlucky). Weekdays - 5pm-8pm. Weekends & Holidays - 8am - 8am
there are 3 hospitals. Moses, Wakefield & Weiler. If you get paged to Wakefield or Weiler, you can take the Uber from the hospital or housing, and you will be reimbursed. There are on-call rooms.
you will see anything from infection/swelling to lacerations to alveolar ridge fractures.
CLINICALLY, Montefiore is not a bad option. It is a program where you can do as much as you want to learn. If you are willing to push yourself and learn, it is a program that can provide. If you just want to cruise by, this program can also do that. It is probably the least intense in terms of on-call.
HOWEVER, the thing that makes Montefiore SUCK & SICK TO MY STOMACH is the program director & administration.
Dr Newsome & her secretary / administration Aggie is the laziest people I have even seen in my life.
You would think, that after running a program for so many years, you would have figured out by now a system to run the program. You would figured out what works and what doesn't work.
1. from the very beginning, they would give us onboarding things to do. The problem is, they would tell us things super last minute or add new onboarding things to do and give a deadline that is so unreasonable. For example, 2 weeks before the program starts, they send out an email saying "Oh, you need to get fit tested for N95 next week". Great! Now I have to change my flight to an earlier flight, because they added a new thing for me to do.
2. no official orientation was given. No one taught us anything. No one tells you where to report to rotations, or what needs to be done. You honestly have to learn as you go. The attendings do their best to ease you in, but anything outside of the clinic site, they probably don't know.
3. vacation weeks. You get a total of 4 vacation weeks. first 3 is assigned, the 4th one you get to choose which week you want. HOWEVER, Dr. Newsome did not tell us anything on how to let her know what weeks we can get off or when to tell her, etc. NOTHING. For example, in the beginning of the residency (like in August), I emailed Newsome, when can I start requesting for my 4th quarter vacation, because my parents want to come and visit. She emails back "4th quarter vacation is open". Great! 2 weeks later, I email her "I would like to have XXX week off". She emails back "I have to wait until the end of the 3rd quarter for 4th quarter vacation requests". I email back saying "In the previous email in August, you told me I could request right now. Because you told me that I could request now, my parents already bought tickets to come visit me from out of the country. Why is there NOW a sudden change when I asked you earlier for clarification? I don't think it is acceptable that I was told one thing, but now that I am actually requesting for my vacation, you won't let me." Then she replies "It seems that no good deed goes unpunished". WTF! What does that mean? Fine, so I wait until near the end of 3rd quarter to request again my vacation week. I email her again, but replies back. So I decided to call her. Newsome picks up and I explain to her my situation that my parents are coming from out of the country and I really need this vacation week to spend with my parents. She replies "I don't understand why your parents are even coming when the program is ending in 3 months". In the heat of the moment, I didn't talk back because I really needed the vacation week off, but that was a VERY UNNECESSARY AND RUDE COMMENT. 1. you said that I could request in the beginning of the residency. (and shouldn't it be first come first serve anyways??? if someone is responsible enough to request early enough, they should be able to get it off. How hard can it be? 2. you can't say that my parents aren't allowed to come, because I am almost finishing residency. That is my parents you are talking about. 3. haven't you ran the program long enough to figure out a system to manage vacation weeks?
4. it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to get in touch with Dr. Newsome or Aggie. You can email them 1000x and they will not respond. But if they want something from you, they demand that you respond to them immediately. Not only that, they have terrible work ethics. My UBER reimbursement from being on-call took over 6 months before I was reimbursed, because they can't do their job right. I would ask the reimbursement office when I can get my reimbursement funds, they said they never received anything from Aggie. Both Newsome and Aggie don't know how to run a program.
At this point, I am sure I can continually nitpick on things, but these are just some stuff that not only I have experience, but similar experiences of other coresidents.
But like I said, if you only look at the clinic aspect of Montefiore, it's not bad. You can learn as much as you want. You get as much as you put in. But if you put the entire program into prospective, especially with the way the program director and her secretary runs things, you will most definitely be frustrated and you might be better off elsewhere.
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