I was perusing www.scutwork.com and noticed that you can search for resident reviews of specific programs around the country. These residents seem to mostly be American allopathic grads so their perspective on SGU's prospective clinical sites might help us make a decision about which clinicals we should consider.



All you have to do is go the clinical site's page: http://www.sgu.edu/website/sguwebsite.nsf/Medicine/AffiliatedHospitals.htm



Then copy and paste the name of the hospital and you should see some reviews of most of the clinical sites. Sometimes you have to fool around with the name in order to get results. For example, "Sound Shore" got results, but "Sound Shore Medical Center" did not show up.



Many of the reviews include info about FMGs and even mention SGU and ROSS specifically. Not a bad way to get some more personalized (subjective) info about the hospital, teaching and neighborhood.

As a word of caution dont take the postings on scutwork to heart. If you notice carefully there are lots of posts that trash programs and then there are multiple posts like that with similar language and tone. There are always disgruntled residents and med students at every program. Besides a program that I thought was excellent for several reasons might be the same reasons it sucks for you. Everyones experience is different and its how they take it. It is a good source dont get me wrong but dont hang on every word from the program.
FOr instance my experience at Brookdale for the most part was great because of what I learned and the hands on I got. Others will say it sucked because there was no formal lectures. I didnt want formal lectures we sat throught them our 1st 2 years. I can read clinical info on my own but the hands on is what we are there for. I hope that makes sense.
As a far as a residents point of view on scut work, I know I work 100 hours or so but on paper I worked 88. Do I care NO! I think my program is good in alot of ways (attendings, residents, staff, work load..etc) so I dont mind working the extra hours to make sure things get done for the patients. So I would rate my program pretty decently whereas some other intern might trash the program for other reasons. Thats just one aspect of course. Other things like education time, types of surgery, case load things like that also are taken into consideration. But let me ask you what is the use of having a high case load when the attending rushes through cases so he can get to his next case and doenst take his time to teach the resident what the hell he is doing or why? What do you learn from that? Nothing...except mindless repetition!

__________________
Nimitt
SGU SOM Alumni Class '05