So you'd say that the major down side is too much clinic and not enough surgery. Is that just in the externship experience or do the residents not get much OR time as well? I think you mentioned in another forum that the ortho residents get all the trauma...does that have anything to do with too much clinic for the pods?
Ortho and pods have tons of clinic. The orthos have like 20 residents so there are more of them to spread all the clinic hours for ortho and there is a knee guy, 2-4 trauma guys, a hand guy and some other orthos. The ortho residents definitely stay busy. They also have to present all the cases that they saw the night before in the ED if they were on call at morning reports in the AM and be prepared to classify the injury and discuss what ER treatment was performed and why and what the literature says about it, then discuss what they would do long term for the patient and what the literature says about that. They also give presentations very often on different ortho topics.
Now for podiatry. I was only there for one month so this is only my account of one month. The bad: The externs are used to cut nails at the VA clinic next door to U of F. I did not agree with the "podiatric medicine" that was performed at the VA. I was not given a tour or introduction to the hospital or how things worked with clinic and surgeries, like how the schedule worked, when I was expected to be in clinic or when in surgery? I was the only extern so I should have been allowed to go to all the surgeries. There were times that I was forced to stay in clinic when there were surgeries going on in the OR. The foot and ankle ortho quit as I mentioned before. THere are 3 major attendings for podiatry. 2 only do bunions and hammetoes and the other will do everything foot and ankle. Podiatry does lectures once a week at lunch and the orthos do not come, but pods go to all things ortho. During my month the attending discussed bunions (nothing exotic) and the 3rd year resident discussed hammertoes. Both lectures were pod school quality almost straight out of McGlamry. Just my opinion.
The good: Great medicine rotation, great hospital, great call room - free coffee, flat panel TV, leather easy chairs, work out equipment - good meal plan, not too far from the beach, Neptune Beach is really cute straight east. The ortho trauma rotation is great, but no foot and ankle guy.
I ended up spending the last 2 weeks solely with ortho trauma and had a great 2 weeks and learned tons. I do not recomend this path. It pissed the pod attendings off royally.
So that in a nut shell ( a really big nut shell) is my oppinion of the program. The residents that are there will be trained fine and for the right person the program is fine, but it was not for me.
It is one of those programs that you get out of it what you put into it. Most programs are like this but some have higher expectations and more oversight. I needed more direction and more of a sure thing.
If I was looking for an ortho program I would have definitely applied there.
