What is your opinion on going to a brand new residency program?

[deleted1119158]

Im interested in a program that is scheduled to become official next year. What is your experience with new programs? what should I be asking and looking for ? I realize surgical numbers are very important. How would I gauge the surgical numbers without prior residents? For example : should I be looking for weekly OR days ?

this is probably a stupid post. I would ask upper classmates but due to covid, communication has been limited

thank you for your time

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[DYK343]

Im interested in a program that is scheduled to become official next year. What is your experience with new programs? what should I be asking and looking for ? I realize surgical numbers are very important. How would I gauge the surgical numbers without prior residents? For example : should I be looking for weekly OR days ?

this is probably a stupid post. I would ask upper classmates but due to covid, communication has been limited

thank you for your time

Depends on who is running the program.

Still a big gamble regardless IMO. New programs will have a lot of hicups and you will be the guinea pig.

Might work out just fine. Might be awful.

 

[josebiwasabi]

A couple thoughts:

-Is the residency program based out of a hospital with pre-existing GME? If so, there are likely to be fewer administrative hiccups.
-How many attendings are involved with the program (both core faculty and adjunct) and what is their training background? What types of cases are they currently performing?
-I rotated at a program where the PGY3 at the time was the first resident ever at that program. I think he ended up with 2500+ cases and was a very good surgeon because he got ALL the cases including the "senior" level cases as a PGY1.
-Your call schedule will probably be awful for both your PGY1 and PGY2 years.

 

[air bud]

High risk high reward

 

[NobodyDPM]

As much as I agree with "high risk, high reward", I am always leary of those programs. I've personally been involved in situations where the program goes south because of some semantic BS that the CPME enforces that makes things difficult. Not a fun situation to be in. I see it this way. You never buy a car in it's first year of production. Let others work out the bugs.

The question is, why are you interested in the program? What about it speaks to you? Ultimately, those are the most important questions to navigate.

 

[Feli]

High risk high reward

Yah, I would let somebody else take the gamble if you have better options.

The high risk is growing pain problems, no reputation, accreditation, etc. Also, not to be underestimated is that you can learn a whole lot from your senior residents, chief, etc... and you won't have any of those.

The potential reward is high surgery since you can cover RRA even first year. There are a lot of programs with plenty of surgery, though.

...I tried looking at some up-and-coming programs when I did interviews and clerkships (didn't clerk at any but did visit two). They weren't brand new and had already graduated residents, but I found they hinged way too heavily on the director or a couple other attendings for numbers, teaching, etc. If you stick with the historically strong programs, they have much more depth among attendings, they attract strong co-residents and externs who can help push you to be better, and they are a known commodity that has worked out the kinks in terms of rotations and academics and numbers and etc. The alumni network is also certainly not hurtful in terms of job leads and general camaraderie. Let someone else roll the dice on newer programs.

 

[CutsWithFury]

Don’t go to a brand new program. Every residency program needs at least 1 cycle of residents (3 years) to fix any problems that the residents or program faced.

Two biggest factors

1) not enough attendings involved. Need to recruit more community DPMs to add to diversity and volume

2) off service rotations might need to added or removed based on how good/bad they are

 

[Pronation]

I would definitely go visit the hospital to see if the cafeteria is any good. Check the nursing units, you'll want to make sure there is at least a selection of crackers, peanut butter, and ginger ale that you can mooch off of when rounding. How are the views out of the hospital windows? Is the scenery nice? Just kidding, read below...

If you don't feel like you can openly communicate with the director then I would skip. As mentioned, this is higher risk but potentially high reward.

You need to spend an OR day with the director.
- Ask to see what their OR schedule looks like for the next 4 weeks. Take note of the cases. Are they just doing toes? Ankles? Pus? Jot down some notes
- Does the director take 3 hours to do a hindfoot fusion? That's a red flag. While I'm no speed demon, a director should be damn good at what they do. Maximum 1 hour for a Lapidus, MTP fusion etc; 2 hours for a triple, medial double, ankle fusion...
- Try to do a morning hospital rounding session with the director or an attending to get a feel for what your daily rounding will be like. Are the inpatients strictly pus? Is there some trauma thrown in?

I feel that there should be at least 3 attendings per resident that are involved with the program. Keep in mind that for a newer program if you are the only resident then you will be almost permanently on call. This is the sacrifice that you make when you don't have a large pool of attendings to cherry pick cases from - a ton of call for a ton of cases.