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Has anyone interviewed at Memorial in South Bend or Siouxland in Sioux City? If so, what is your opinion of those programs? I'm interviewing at both next week and would appreciate any insight.
Two interviews left - Memorial in South Bend and Siouxland in Sioux City
- Thread starter VuDOo
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I rotated through FP at Memorial and grew up there. I've also spent nearly a quarter century off and on at the hospital (my father's a neonatologist there).
The program is amazing. Tremendously procedure-oriented; you will get to do everything. Particularly in OB...you'll graduate competent to perform your own C-sections if you want (and several residents do). The faculty are spectacular; your preceptors will be top-notch specialists who have no other residents to teach. Memorial is fully unopposed. The FP faculty are tremendously dedicated and fiercely protective of their residents.
Salary's great, you get a housing stipend on top of it, can moonlight very early on in residency at great pay. The hospital's growing quickly. South Bend and the surrounding area has, for at least the twenty-odd years I'm familiar with, been consolidating more and more health care in Memorial.
Let me know if I can answer any specific questions. It's a superior place.
The program is amazing. Tremendously procedure-oriented; you will get to do everything. Particularly in OB...you'll graduate competent to perform your own C-sections if you want (and several residents do). The faculty are spectacular; your preceptors will be top-notch specialists who have no other residents to teach. Memorial is fully unopposed. The FP faculty are tremendously dedicated and fiercely protective of their residents.
Salary's great, you get a housing stipend on top of it, can moonlight very early on in residency at great pay. The hospital's growing quickly. South Bend and the surrounding area has, for at least the twenty-odd years I'm familiar with, been consolidating more and more health care in Memorial.
Let me know if I can answer any specific questions. It's a superior place.
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I interviewed there too and loved it, although it is not my #1. So I guess I "liked it alot". I just want to be friends. Okay, enough 
My experience:
Night before is a casual dinner with your host resident and other residents and spouses. Your host resident will probably contact you via email or phone to set it up (or both). The residents get along extremely well, and are of the loud, funny, life-of-the-party variety of people. Most live near eachother and hang out, and when the PGY-3s graduate, they do a send-off roast. They play silly pranks on eachother, for example one of them added another residents name the the medicine inpatient list and said he was in for priapism. I thought this was hilarious, but some people aren't that boisterous and if so, you could feel a bit left out.
Your host picks you up at the arse crack of dawn for breakfast with the residents and your tour in the reverse order. The hospital is huge, suprisingly aesthetic, with nice call rooms and lacks that cramped, depressing feel that most hospitals have.
Interview day is very busy, you meet the entire faculty in two-on-one sessions, where each set of faculty has a set of information about the program to discuss with you. Some ask you questions, but I found that I asked most of the questions. They were all very friendly. You meet with Dr. Riley, the program director, both at the start and end of the interview. He is an extremely personable fellow who is totally dedicated to making his program the best around.
After the interview day, you go to noon lecture then meet with Dr. Riley again. Once that's done, you get a tour of their sports med facility and meet their sports med dudes, who will each interview you for 10 minutes. They are down and dirty fellows, nice, but they don't want to shoot the shirt with you, they want to get down to business and discuss your career goals and why south bend will fit that. They also show you some cool videos of insane olympic weight-lifting injuries
Program Pros:
1) Volume, volume, volume, especially in areas that programs have trouble with, like inpatient peds and continuity OB.
2) If you don't like OB at all, you'll be better at it than you ever wanted to be when done with this program.
3) Very procedure oriented.
4) Much moonlighting, encouraged, and easily available, and I believe covered under their malpractice.
5) Great relationship with local docs, preceptors love to teach
6) Their goal is to teach you to be a doctor in one year, then give you two more to refine your education to meet your goals. The worst thing to them is to turn out a graduate who isn't comfortable thinking for themselves.
7) Super DO friendly, their sports med guy is an MD who does omm, they are buying an OMM table, etc.
Program Cons:
1) Their "responsibility oriented" approach can be interpreted by some as being thrown to the wolves. I was specifically told by three faculty and one resident that they do not "throw you to the wolves", without my even asking about level of independence or responsibility or anything like that. I wondered why they felt that they needed to tell me that - perhaps to counter what they thought some residents might say??
2) They were a little defensive about the 80 hour work week, emphasizing that it averages out, it is hard to interrupt the learning sometimes to meet the little rules, like the 30 hour thing, the 10 hours between shifts, etc.
They will all send you a letter of thanks after your interview. All of them. All 13 of them that you met. You will not believe how many envelopes and emails with the words "memorial" you will receive after the interview. I was very glad that i wrote individual thank yous too!
Overall, I thought that this place would be good for the hard-working, hyperactive, bordering on obnxious prank-pulling type who ain't got time to bleed. I liked it and "am likely to rank it highly" ;O)
My experience:
Night before is a casual dinner with your host resident and other residents and spouses. Your host resident will probably contact you via email or phone to set it up (or both). The residents get along extremely well, and are of the loud, funny, life-of-the-party variety of people. Most live near eachother and hang out, and when the PGY-3s graduate, they do a send-off roast. They play silly pranks on eachother, for example one of them added another residents name the the medicine inpatient list and said he was in for priapism. I thought this was hilarious, but some people aren't that boisterous and if so, you could feel a bit left out.
Your host picks you up at the arse crack of dawn for breakfast with the residents and your tour in the reverse order. The hospital is huge, suprisingly aesthetic, with nice call rooms and lacks that cramped, depressing feel that most hospitals have.
Interview day is very busy, you meet the entire faculty in two-on-one sessions, where each set of faculty has a set of information about the program to discuss with you. Some ask you questions, but I found that I asked most of the questions. They were all very friendly. You meet with Dr. Riley, the program director, both at the start and end of the interview. He is an extremely personable fellow who is totally dedicated to making his program the best around.
After the interview day, you go to noon lecture then meet with Dr. Riley again. Once that's done, you get a tour of their sports med facility and meet their sports med dudes, who will each interview you for 10 minutes. They are down and dirty fellows, nice, but they don't want to shoot the shirt with you, they want to get down to business and discuss your career goals and why south bend will fit that. They also show you some cool videos of insane olympic weight-lifting injuries
Program Pros:
1) Volume, volume, volume, especially in areas that programs have trouble with, like inpatient peds and continuity OB.
2) If you don't like OB at all, you'll be better at it than you ever wanted to be when done with this program.
3) Very procedure oriented.
4) Much moonlighting, encouraged, and easily available, and I believe covered under their malpractice.
5) Great relationship with local docs, preceptors love to teach
6) Their goal is to teach you to be a doctor in one year, then give you two more to refine your education to meet your goals. The worst thing to them is to turn out a graduate who isn't comfortable thinking for themselves.
7) Super DO friendly, their sports med guy is an MD who does omm, they are buying an OMM table, etc.
Program Cons:
1) Their "responsibility oriented" approach can be interpreted by some as being thrown to the wolves. I was specifically told by three faculty and one resident that they do not "throw you to the wolves", without my even asking about level of independence or responsibility or anything like that. I wondered why they felt that they needed to tell me that - perhaps to counter what they thought some residents might say??
2) They were a little defensive about the 80 hour work week, emphasizing that it averages out, it is hard to interrupt the learning sometimes to meet the little rules, like the 30 hour thing, the 10 hours between shifts, etc.
They will all send you a letter of thanks after your interview. All of them. All 13 of them that you met. You will not believe how many envelopes and emails with the words "memorial" you will receive after the interview. I was very glad that i wrote individual thank yous too!
Overall, I thought that this place would be good for the hard-working, hyperactive, bordering on obnxious prank-pulling type who ain't got time to bleed. I liked it and "am likely to rank it highly" ;O)
