Teaching:  | Atmosphere:  | Research:  |
Schedule
The call schedule is amazing. Due to a new progressive Night Float system, there is no more 24 hr+ call. You work no more than 12 hours per shift. During a typical wards month, you will have no overnight call during the week and only one weekend for the month in which you will do a 12 hour shift on Saturday night(7PM to 7 AM) and a 12 hour shift Sunday night. A resident does 1 month of nights. During the day on wards, you will work from 6:30 to 4:30 on average. Each month on wards, residents will have three weekends off, meaning three golden weekends per month! Third years don't take any overnight call or night float for the entire year. During intern year, you have 4 Wards months, 1 ICU month, 1 Surgery month, 1 Womens Health month, 1 Cardiology month, 1 Pulmonology month, and 2 Elective months. Interns are limited to carrying 6 patients but can admit as many as possible on call days. Due to the night float, there is Q6 etc type of call. You just have to do two 12 hr nights on a weekend per month
Teaching
The faculty is benign. I can call my attendings and never feel intimidated. They don't expect formal presentations and treat you like colleagues. Presenting patients to attendings is a breeze and you can avoid all the ritualistic hazing and get down to learning medicine. The senior residents also treat you like equals instead of the hierarchy system. From day one, you are treated like a peer and expected to function like one. This was a challege for the first 1 week but now I already feel like my own attending. The program is unique in the sense that you learn to function like an attending from day one. You are responsible for admitting, writing orders, discharging and managing your patients from the start. You work directly with the attendings on your patients. I enjoy the freedom and trust the attendings allow us to manage our patients. My clinical skills are already far advanced my peers due to the responsibility we receive from the start. Teaching continues to grow in this program. We have mandatory morning and noon conferences in addition to attending rounds. My attending spends 30 minutes on a dry erase board daily going over orders and management skills. Our attending rounds are relatively short (less than 30 minutes) which I find more beneficial than rounding for hours, learning nothing as I watch the attending complete his notes as you see in other programs. --The hospital is designed to eliminate skut as much as possible. When admitting patients, you are never bothered with tracking down med lists as the nurses already write down and input them in the computer. The ER's EMPOWER system enables you to get vitals, labs, pmhx, and allergies prior to even seeing the patient. All of these luxuries enable you to focus on what is important instead of wasting time tracking meds or history. The hospital also uses Cerner as its EMR so it's very user friendly. In addition, studies are performed and read immediately. Imagine getting imaging read and available on Cerner instantly. I got a stool study to look for C. diff done in less than 24 hours. Procedures are plentiful. Unlike other programs, interns will actually get to intubate, do Central lines and other procedures. Since there are no fellows to compete with, residents do all the procedures.
Atmosphere
Food is 100% free! There are no meal cards or cash. You can order whatever you want including taking food home and it's on the hospital. Residents also receive $600 per year for an educational fund which residents can use to buy an I-phone, computer or any other object that can be used for educational purposes. Residents also get their own marked parking spots in front of the hospital so there are no long walks. Third years get special gated parking next to the hospital entrance. Unlike other hospitals, residents are treated like royalty. Nurses are actually nice at this hospital and will help you out and eliminate much of the scut work. It's nice to walk around and be treated so nicely by the staff. The camraderie among peers is strong. Last weekend, a resident had a bonfire party at his home near the mountains. The weather is amazing. It has San Diego-style weather as it's 10 degrees cooler than Phoenix on average. It's not as hot but still sunny with clear skies. The hospital is small but clean and easily manageable. The metropolitan area of Sierra Vista is around 110,000. It has a mall, a Best Buy, Buffalo Wild Wings, Target, Chiles etc so it has the basics. During the weekend, you can always drive into Tucson (1 hour away), Bisby (30 minutes) or Phoenix (2.5 hrs away). Some residents live in Tucson and commute while most others rent houses Bisby is a fun Colorado/SF style artsy town with fun bars. There is plenty of time to read or relax in the evening. There are no foreign medical graduates in this program as this is a DO program.
Conclusion
The lifestyle and quality of life is arguably the best of any internal medicine program in the country. The salary is also high for a residency program. Interns are paid close to $49,000 per year. The cost of living is low and when you account for the free meals and $600 expense account, it really adds up. The drawbacks are the teaching. You learn at this program through doing. Although the workload is more than manegeable, attendings don't spend much time teaching. There are no fellowships. There are exceptions of course and some attendings are amazing while others use you for cheap labor; none of this seems too different from most programs. I would feel prepared at the end of intern year let alone third year due to the individual responsibility placed on the interns. You truly function like an attending. That part can be a challenge at times since you learn to become independent but it's also empowering. YOu would be well prepared to serve as a hospitalist or outpatient physicians. Most of the graduates go into private practice but that will change with each subsequent class. Two graduates got fellowships (Endocrine, Infectious Disease). The program continues to get competitive as its reputation grows and its well deserved. This is a program that strikes the right balance of lifestyle and intense work. I do not welcome inquiries about my experience with this program because I've done my best to provide as much information as possible.
