St. Joseph Mercy-Oakland Hospital in Pontiac, MI

[NicSTX]

Anyone complete any clinical rotations through here? We're supposed to be filling out our preferences and since this hospital had almost everything I was thinking about just doing everything there.

Thoughts?

[Sree Cheruku]

surgery is great - our best surgery center hands down, lots and lots of good experience, excellent opportunity for letters of recommendation, hours are brutal 5am-5pm, frequent calls - when you request surgery here, aua gives you 8 weeks by default - while that is ok for licensure, i dont think its enough to give you a sufficient surgery experience and enough to get a nice letter of recommendation - highly recommend that you request 12 weeks of surgery. if the person on the other end of the phone line doesn't understand what 12 weeks of surgery means, explain that you want 8 weeks of general and 4 weeks of special surgery.

IM is good too - not like Harbor, but it's ok i guess - daily lectures, free food, etc., + you'll see Dr. K - Unlike Harbor Hospital, this program doesn't have a ICU component, so if you're into critical care medicine you should just do an elective in it (at the same hospital). the advantage over harbor is that this program (and the hospital in general) takes very very few students. Sometimes you'll be the only student on a rotation - like I've been , twice. But, that's great because you get more attention and learn more.
Ob is great - probably our best Ob program, there's a clinic portion and you even get to assist with Ob surgeries (OB/GYN here is no longer Green as of July 2008)

FM - great program, million times better than Jackson park, but its at nearby North Oakland (rather than at St. Joe's) which actually has a family medicine residency program - residents are rly nice and there's daily lectures etc.

The radiology elective is greenbook here as well, if you're interested in going into that field.

Peds - NOT GREENBOOK NO MATTER WHAT AUA OR ANYONE SAYS- and it's horrible - I dropped out after 2 weeks - bad teaching environment - The only reason to do Peds here is if you are absolutely sure that you want to practice in a state that accepts Blue-Book rotations. Michigan probably will not allow you to practice if you do this rotation, New York probably will since they don't care what you do outside their state, as long as the stuff you do within NY state is ACGME or AOA.

Recommend you do IM, FM, Surg, Ob, and IM electives here. Once again, do not do Peds here if you are looking for Greenbook rotations. There are plenty of AUA students who got tricked into doing it here - 3 have dropped it, to date.

oh and this place is getting popular and getting booked so apply asap. if you can't get in right away, take care of peds/psych in NY and get everything else done in MI - since you can't do peds/psych in MI, to date, though that might change by the time you're here.

[hannahMD]

Hi I'm accepted to AUA as a transfer student. I'll start the 6th semester next January. I'm interested in doing most of my core rotations in St. Joseph Mercy in MI since it's close to my home. I have some questions about the hospital: 1)Are IM, Surg, Ob/gyn, and Pysch green book rotations? 2)Is it possible to schedule all of them in one hospistal? 3)Where is a good place to do Peds (green book and in midwest)?

[Sree Cheruku]

1)Are IM, Surg, Ob/gyn, and Pysch green book rotations?

IM and Surg are. Psych is not, Ob/gyn is currently green but it may not be, one year from now

2)Is it possible to schedule all of them in one hospistal?

In NY yeah (Wyckoff). I don't know very much about how Atlanta works.

3)Where is a good place to do Peds (green book and in midwest)?

As of now, New York and San Juan are our only green Peds rotations. (Once again, I don't know much about Atlanta). If someone tells you that any of our other Peds rotations are greenbook, demand solid evidence ( = acgme.org listing).

[hannahMD]

Thanks for the info.

[doctor1981]

Has anyone done rotations recently in this hospital??--st.joseph and north oakland? and how are they? I have already completed IM at harbor. they are giving me wycoff for the rest of my rotations-obgyn,peds,surgery,fp..but I haven't heard the best things about wycoff..do you think it is better to go to Michigan and do all my cores there and then come back to wycoff to do peds? could someone plz let me know..I would really appreciate it!! and also do the spots in michigan get full real quick? if someone could plz let me know their experience and also if i should chose michigan overy wycoff?? thanx!!

[Sree Cheruku]

I had the same decision to make and I chose St. Joe's because it's the only hospital with a surgery residency program that AUA is currently affiliated with. (Well Union Memorial too, but they're not allowing AUA students to do the general surgery core with them.) There's also an Ob/Gyn residency program here (North Oakland shut down its program and moved all its residents to St. Joe's). Finally, there's a Family Medicine residency program at North Oakland. I don't really much care for Peds and Psych so I'm doing them at Wyckoff. So, I think that your decision to come to Mich or not depends on how much you care about Surgery/ObGyn.

Michigan is getting booked very fast. So if you do choose Michigan, make sure you schedule Ob/Gyn as soon as possible because the ACGME accreditation expires in July, and though St. Joe's plans to apply for it, I don't know if they will get approved, at least not immediately.

[doctor1981]

Thank You so much for your quick reply..appreciate it..

The problem is that the school has scheduled all my cores back to back at wycoff(peds first,then surgery,obgyn,family and then psych)..I have already completed IM at harbor..there are other students at harbor that told me that wycoff is not good and especially not good for surgery..its ok for peds and obgyn..so not sure if I should go to wycoff or ask the school to schedule me for michigan..I was just going to do the peds part at wycoff..how is peds at wycoff? do they teach? I want to go somewhere where I learn a lot but I know this is the only opportunity I will have to learn.after that I will never be doing these rotations again..so If you could give me some advice on which program is better for what cores--surgery,obgyn,peds,--at either wycoff or st.joe's?? the great part about wycoff is that you can schedule everything back to back without any breaks..not sure if u can do that at st.joe's? If you could let me know I would really appreciate it! thanx again for your help!

[NicSTX]

I'm bumping this because it has more info from sree in it

[Sree Cheruku]

The SJM-O housing list is attached to this post.