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My experience in a Surgical Residency


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I received my surgical training from a medical center that offered a Surgical Residency (I graduated about 1 years ago). It's a fairly young program, < 5 years old and only 3 people had graduated from that program thus far (should be a hint for those thinking about joining this program).

 

Do i regret doing it? Heck yea. Why? Like the other blogger Maniaic had said, the problem with these programs are lack of OR time. that was my problem. No OR time = plenty of floor and clinic work. They would assign you OR cases that other residents have nooooooo interest of doing. So it's not completely no OR time, but it's cases nobody wants to do. So lets say a pa resident wants to first assist in a simple appendectomy, they would say "no, we have to give it to our MD residents, they need this type of training more, we'll assign you to this carpal tunnel case instead (even though you've done 100 of them already)" Fair??? no...

 

I have never assisted in any basic general surgery cases since i was there. very frustrating. Bottom line, if i had the choice of doing perhaps another organized program or even do OTJT, i'd rather do those than do this residency again. I thought about quitting, but I didn't want to be a quitter.

 

So for those that wants to do a surgical residency, PLEASE, join a program that has been well established (aka been around for years and has a good reputation ie: Yale or Monte Fiore hospital, even Einstein). When you interview for a small hospital with post graduate residency, beware because no matter how promising, in the end you'll regret it.

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I attended montefiore. While there are OR opportunities, there are MD residents there and the same competition issues, and if you are in that setting you will always have that problem.

Second, from my decade in surgery so far I think that the most important thing you can be doing in a residency is learning perioperative management. You will learn to scrub and basic assisting, which will get you to where you need to be for your first job after residency. The place where you need the MOST functioning independence is OUTSIDE the OR. As a PA you will likely NOT be doing an appy alone; you WILL be managing pre and post ops ALONE while your SP is in the clinic, at another hospital or on his boat.

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IT seems like the OPs issue was with getting more case variety exposure. A year spent in a surgical residency doing even the most mundane cases will get you enough scrub time to know sterile technique, cut/suck/retract etc.

 

The independent exposure you get as a PA resident exceeds what you might get in OTJ in almost all cases; it was certainly true at montefiore.

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Actually, for three months in general surgery rotation in my residency, I only assisted in approximately 15 cases. Half of those cases did not need an assist. I agree Andersenpa, pa's getting floor work experience is very important. However, in my residency on floor work is very different. You have no say about anything, everything you do or attempt to do, you have to report it to your resident. During rounds, you are almost invisible to others, they only care about the MD resident. It's almost like you're treated like a student. I didn't even get to do one central line, NG tube or chest tube.

 

Very horrible experience. Wasted my time.

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  • 3 months later...

I did a huge amount of my pre-PA shadowing in the Norwalk/Yale surgical department. I can say first hand that the PA residents seemed very pleased with the experience and training they were getting. I have been in and out of many hospitals as a paramedic and I can honestly say that the environment at Norwalk is excellent. The PA's have tremendous support and respect and they appear very happy in general.

a buddy of mine did the yale/norwalk residency and had a very different experience. there were no md surgical residents so he could first assist asnything he wanted to on his o.r. days.

he liked it so much he stayed on an extra yr to work the surgical icu after graduation.

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