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PGY3 Overall Rating: 29-Apr- 2002 Teaching: Atmosphere: Research: Schedule Residents usually come between 7 and 7:30, attend two conferences (7:30 and 11:30), round with their teams, have morning report. In the afternoon, you deal with medical records, see the patients on your team you did not see in the morning, talk to attendings, meet with medical students, go look things up in the library. I usually leave around 5:30/6 PM. Call nights are q4 in your floor months, no call nights during electives. Cap for intern is very well enforced at 5, cap for residents usally not quite as strict, but I rarely had many more than 10 patients/night. As a resident on call, you are the most senior internist in the house. You supervise two interns, run the codes, do consults and deal with the transfers and admissions. I like that because you learn how to manage things and get challenged, but for some people it is scary. No scutworK at all. The workload is very light compared to other programs. I definitely always had time, even during my internship, to go and look things up and read for an hour/day. Patient diversity is decent for a community hospital, but you definitely don't see the very exotic cases. Also, Derby is an white, ex-blue collar worker area, so not many African-Americans or Hispanics, not a lot of AIDS-patients, lots of old nursing home patients on the floors. Teaching There definitely is a split between younger faculty and hospitalists, who are very good and heavily into teaching, and many of the older community attendings, who don't care all that much. Conferences are twice a day and generally pretty good, especially if they bring in Yale faculty. Morning report is also very educational. What stands out in my mind is the program's commitment to listening to its residents: if you want something changed and you have a good reason for it, people will listen to you and try to make you happy. Research opportunities are excellent if you want to work in the areas of public health, prevention, health and human rights, and community health. They have a Prevention Research Center and an Integrated Medicine Clinic for Combined Naturopath/Allopath Medicine. Research in subspecialty areas is much more difficult, but possible if you hook up with the Yale people. The combined program (4 years internal medicine/preventive medicine with an MPH from Yale) is definitely a very good deal. Atmosphere Physical environment is beautiful as has been mentioned before. Relationship among residents, with attendings, nurses and other staff are very cordial. It is a small place, so lots of gossip. But everybody knows each other, and if you like that, it is a very warm, friendly place to work. Excellent ancillary staff, friendly and knowledgeable respiratory therapists, etc. Definitely very easy to have a life because of the light workload. Also, the program gives out a lot of goodies, such as free MKSAP's, palm pilots etc. Conclusion What stands out in the program is the friendliness, the small personal scale of things, the atmosphere, and the willingness of program director and chief resident to listen to you and accomodate your personal quirks and wishes if at all possible. Research opportunities within the combined program are also very good. Drawbacks are the flip side of the advantages: it is a small community hospital, so exposure to exotic subspecialty cases is poor. If you know that you want a subspecialty fellowship, this is probably not the right place to come unless you organize your Yale electives very early. I know a few people who did not get the fellowships they wanted because they did not get their electives in time for interviewing. Small place, friendly atmosphere, almost too friendly in that weaker residents/interns are tolerated instead of disciplined. If you have initiative and want to learn, you can learn a lot. If you just want to do as little as possible, you can probably get away with that, too. I definitely feel prepared once finished. I would choose this program again. I'll be happy to answer any questions about my experiences with the program.

Recent Residency Graduate Overall Rating: 26-Apr- 2002 Teaching: Atmosphere: Research: Schedule In Internal medicine we started with morning prerounding, then lectures and morning rounds with attending and the team. The residents had morning report after the rounds while the interns finished up writing notes and patient care. Then there were noon lectures and then in afternoon you continued with patient management. If you were on call the admissions came to you after the other interns all had 2 new admissions EACH and/or after 2pm (interns NOT on call did not get new admissions after 2 pm). During the week the on call person would leave at 8 pm and the night float would pick up all new addmissions until 7 am and distribute them between the interns the next morning. Night float intern had friday and sat off and the floor interns had to do overnight calls on the weekends. In ICU there are 3 interns and they are on call every 3rd night. There are only 14 ICU beds. Not all the beds are occupied by medicine patients so the work load was not overwhelming. Electives were done either at Yale or Griffin. If you wanted to sub-specialize in a certain subspecialty, you had the opportunity to do so at Yale by taking a few electives there and learning and getting yourself more acquainted with their program. During ER rotation, we did not have any calls. There were a WIDE variety of patients there with alot of different and unsusual pathologies. Teaching Teaching and the faculty was great. They really tried hard and made an effort to teach IF you were interested and eager to learn. We had all sorts of conferances there and all sorts of lectures, with adequate notice and postings. Atmosphere Very nice relationship between the housestaff and also between the housestaff and the hospital staff, nurses and the attendings. Wonderful place to work. I think it is the most beautiful hospital I have ever seen. I had alot of free time to study and have my own personal life. I hardly ever felt tired as an intern. The attendings and the chief resident was very supportive and helpful. They were reliable and trustworthy people and excellent physicians. Conclusion I loved the program. Would choose the program again if I had to. I would do my residency there over again if I had to repeat it. I did great on my boards. My co-residents had the same idea as well. We completely enjoyed the residency. If I have an opportunity, I will apply there for an attending position.

Recent Residency Graduate Overall Rating: 25-Apr- 2002 Teaching: Atmosphere: Research: Schedule The day for ME started at 0630 am for pre-rouding, then the morning lectures @0700 and the working rounds @ 0800 with the team. The morning rounds were conducted with the teaching attending and the senoir resident and the interns and medical students. In Internal medicine program, there is the night float system with short calls(until 8 pm) Q 4 days and weekend calls were divided between the interns in the team. The ICU call is Q3 nights and you were able to adjust the schedule with your co-interns in a way that you can each have a weekend off! Electives were done at Yale with the elective of your choice. ER rotation was 8 hour shifts per day, 5 days a week (and you made your schedule). Workload at Griffin was VERY fair and equally distributed. NO SCUT WORK AT ALL. Orders were taken orally and all orders were executed IMMEDIATELY. All results were available immediately. You had plenty pf sleep during call nights and pages were for true emergencies. Admissions during the night were also very fair. Senoir residents were helpful and cooperative. Teaching -Excellent teaching program and highly knowlegable faculty. They have recent and up to date information and knowledge about the latest literature. -During work rounds, we had intese teaching by the teaching attending with patient focused management. After the working rounds we had the attending giving us a small lecture about the most interesting case of the day. -Morning report for interns was once a week and for senoir residents was daily. During morning report, focus was TEACHING and not torchering or questioning. -Ever day we had two hours of class room teaching EVERYDAY in addition to the grand rounds, M&M, echo conferance, Pathology rounds, Radiology rounds, EKG/cardiology lectures, ambulatory lecture, Journal club, Medical Jeopardy game etc. -During the ICU rotation a Yale Pulmonary/CCU attending would conduct the rounds, again with focused case disscusion on the most interesting case, PA Catheter interpretation, ventilator management, and ABG interpretaion. -Board simulated exams were done 2x year and board review was done on a regular basis. Atmosphere *VERY pleasant place to work. The hospital is beautiful, clean, practical and adequately staffed. Griffin hospital is in Derby which is 15 min away from New Haven and about 1.5 hours away from New York. The area is very well located, being close to New York and Boston. *Even though Derby is in a prime area, rent is very inexpensive, and if you chose to live away from the hospital to get out of the working mode after working hours, you could easily find a nice place to live in New Haven area. ***Call rooms were like hotel room with self controlled air conditioner/heater. TV, telephone, refrigirator, and a shower/bathroom that was cleaner and better equiped than the Marriots. House keeping was always avaiable to provide you with extra blankets or towels. **There were areas in the Hospital were you could relax and be calm like the aquarium areas, the flower garden etc. There is an area for worship available for ALL faiths. There is a fully equiped kitchen available on EVERY ward. There is food available for residents 24 hours a day. We had unlimited meal tickets for the cafeteria food. The cafe. had a FULL salad bar, soups, vegetarian food, and white/red meat dishes, and a cardiac meal as well, and the remaining side dishes, snacks, desert, and beverages. **Excellent auxillary aid. Very friendly, helpful and pleasant nurses and techs. **Relationship between residents and interns were extremely well. We helped eachother and supported eachother alot with the workload. Attendings were very nice and polite and pleasant to work with. *All attempts were made to meet with the attendings outside of workplace for friendly gatherings. Teaching attendings always invited the team for lunch outside on the last day of the rotation. I MOST CERTAINLY did have a life. Exercised everyday for 2 hours, and had a wonderful social life. Was able to travel out of town on my long weekends. Conclusion Stand outs: Yale affiliate, friendly atmosphere community hospital which gave me Yale education with adequate work load to allow me to prepare myself for the boards. (I was never overworked/fatigued from work) Drawbacks: ===NONE=== Prepared: Yes I do feel I am prepared for the real life. There was adequate opportunity given to me. Reapply to the same program: Definately I would reapply here again. I always said that I could remain an intern ALL MY LIFE at Griffin. ==> Griffin Hospital and the Department of Internal Medicine/Surgery/ Transitional Year is an ADULT TRAINING PROGRAM for adults whom are prepared to be trained. As compared to the other residency programs this is a very benign residency however the teaching is available for people who want to learn. The resident are NOT taken as cheap labour. There are enough manpower to do the work. If ANY applicant has ANY QUESTION I would be more than glad to answer them. Looking forward to hearing from you.

PGY3 Overall Rating: 25-Apr- 2002 Teaching: Atmosphere: Research: Schedule I have noticed an abundance of new reviews with regards to this program. As a PGY3 I can tell you that they tend to be correct with regards to hours of work. However, they are grossly exaggerated in other regards. As a resident, I work as hard as an intern (especially as this group of interns) if not harder. We have to manage all admissions, with no backup and no help from interns, and help interns (even as late as April of their intern year) with basic floor management issues. This was not the case in years past. The last two classes of interns, including my own class, had excellent, hardworking, independent members, who always tried their best. This year, the hospital has gotten the WORST class of interns in the history of the program. (This is generally agreed upon by both attendings and residents). They are the laziest, least knowledgable, most unmotivated and uncaring group of people I have ever known since entering the medical field. They will make terrible physicians and I hope that you can look beyond their petty comments and make your own judgement of Griffin hospital. In anycase, they will be FINALLY leaving soon, so the program will soon be a much better place. Teaching The hospitalist faculty are generally very good, but the private and community attendings often are not. Dr. Barakat and Dr. Choi are two excellent examples of young, enthusiastic teachers that have recently joined the staff of Griffin Hospital. Hopefully, more like them will follow. Unfortunately, the new chief resident, Dr. D'souza, although a good teacher, is very poor as a leader and a chief. She is too busy worrying about little details rather than actually dealing with the big issues, including disciplinary action towards interns who often don't even EXAMINE their patients. Atmosphere The residents get along very well and help each other. As an intern, my class bonded VERY well also. This is really the only year, with this particular group of interns, that I've seen strife and tension in the hospital. As I said before, this should definitely improve once they leave. And Griffin hospital will be a better place. Conclusion I say it is a decent program that is constantly trying to improve.

Intern Overall Rating: 21-Apr- 2002 Teaching: Atmosphere: Research: Schedule The typical day begins around 630-700 am with pre-rounding on your patients. At 7:30am you attend your first useless teaching conference. Half of the lecturers don't show or are as much as an hour late. At 8:30 you do "work rounds", actually no work is involved, you sit at a table with your resident and fellow intern and give a quick one-liner about your patients. Half to two-thirds of your patients are never seen by your resident. Then from 9:30-10:30 you have either sit-down rounds or attending rounds. Depending on the attending this can actually be beneficial/educating. As an intern you definately exceed the ACGME requirements for the number of hours worked. You are totally taken advantage of. On your post-call mornings, your resident conveniently escapes at 8am leaving you with up to 20 notes/patients to see. There is no such thing as a cap, interns have had to manage as many a 14 patients, with as many as 8-9 admissions per night on-call. If you're fortunate you are on call with a knowledgeable resident. If you're unlucky, you may end up with a third or fourth year who knows less than you do. Teaching Teaching at Griffin hosptial is horrible. Half of the lecturers don't show. There are a few great attendings who are great teachers, but only a few. Most have little to no bedside manner/personal skills(ie:chairman of the dept, and the chief of staff)and are flat out rude/condesending to patients and staff. The best day of the week is probably Thursday not for didactics, but for the fact that there is lunch served during grand rounds. A few conferences are conducted by Yale attendings and are truely exceptional for their didactic value (GI, and Grand Rounds). The only thing this program has going for it is its new addition, Dr. S. D'souza. She is a great teacher and is extremely dedicated to the education of the residents. Atmosphere The physical environment is exceptional. The building is brand new. The philosopy of the hospital (plane tree) is unique. Where else can you see guitar players, dogs, and pianists on the patient floors. The smell of fresh baked goods looms in the air, the floors are bright and vibrant. Camaraderie amoung peers is ok, people tolerate each other. We have learned to work together but most dislike each other. Conclusion What stands out the most is the condition of the hospital, it is a beautiful place, aesthetically speaking. The residents offer little-no help, spend most of the day on the internet and are not very sure of themselves. I would be scarred shitless to stay in this program as a PGY-2, andv be the only one in house covering the ICU, telemetry, and Gen Med. The PGY-2's are definately not ready for that type of responsibility. As previously mentioned, there are some residents graduating now that are still at the level of an intern. Maybe thats due to the internet surfing that occurs years 2-3,4. My advice to you is to stay far away from Derby, CT.