toofache32 said:
I heard that they have the highest divorce rate and they work you to death and the residents all hate each other.
Actually, I don't want to perpetuate these rumors about my own program, even though I think they're funny as hell. These rumors have been going around for years and years for some reaason.
The clinical experience comes from 4 different hospitals/rotations, each with a different patient base. Parkland itself is the county hospital where we operate 4 days per week. It's mainly trauma/fractures. We do all of our own trauma...nothing gets handed to ENT/Plastics because "it's too complicated". Actually, the opposite is true...we get a lot of stuff from ENT/Plastics because they historically don't do as much trauma and they're frankly just not as interested in it. It's probably the way it should be because it's an absolute joke to watch the Plastics guys fumble their way through a facial fracture. Most Thursdays we do rhinoplasties with our fellowship-trained cosmetics faculty. We do some orthognathic surgery at Parkland, but it's mainly "gnathic" surgery because no orthodontist is involved. We still make splints and do the model surgery but we use arch bars instead of braces. It's not the most ideal outcome for patients, but we definitely learn how to cut on these.
The VA hospital is a lot of dentoalveolar, some implants, a fair amount of cosmetics (blepharoplasties, chemical peel, laser skin resurfacing) and a lot of skin cancer reconstruction with flaps. There's a lot of skin cancer in those old Gomers that come to the VA.
John-Peter-Smith Hospital in Fort Worth is the county hospital in the next county, and they do a good bit of orthognathics and a TON of skin cancer. There is no Plastics program there to compete with. We just hired a new fellowship-trained cancer faculty who will be doing his own microvascular free-flaps.
The 4th rotation is the "Private Service" which includes our faculty's private patients. There's a lot more cosmetics, implants, and orthognathics with these patients. Children's hospital has a lot of craniofacial deformities...OMFS and Plastics do the cases together usually. There's a lot of cranial vault reshaping, primary clefts, fistula closures, and stuff like that.
Here's the weaknesses of Parkland (in my opinion): there isn't much 3rd molar surgery and the implant experience is abysmal. Most of the implants are done by faculty on their patients. It's funny...they are very protective of their patients, but they will let us do anything we damn well please on Parkland patients.
