Autonomy/Operative Heavy Programs

[Guest]

In my experience a lot of the southern schools still have great autonomy. Schools such as Carolinas, Emory, Miami, Tulane, Baylor. Having rotated at a few of these in the past and knowing current residents you get much more autonomy early and in complex cases as the lead surgeon than many northeast/west coast programs.

[Guest]

The southeast and Midwest programs have much more autonomy than the northeast and west coast programs. Much improved medicolegal environments

[Midwest neurosurgeon]

In any program, you get autonomy by gaining the trust of the attending that you will do things they way they do them. It’s not like Midwest attendings are going to let you fuck up their patients because malpractice is less of a threat. You think being a PGY3 means independent discectomy? Not if I don’t know what you’re going to do every step of the way.

[Guest]

Spoken like someone from a northeast or west coast program who hasn’t yet done a discectomy independently and is feeling salty about it

[Guest]

(06-27-2023, 04:29 PM)Guest Wrote: MN is fantastic. But FL and AZ are poop.

true

[Guest]

Every single program will tell you you'll get heavy operative exposure by the end - it's all BS. They all say the same thing but you'll never know for sure until you're a resident there.

[Guest]

See how many residents go to spine fellowships and end up in PP. That’ll tell you if they operate enough to be decent. Nobody good blows a year in a fellowship unless they aren’t capable on graduation or they want to do academics.

[Guest]

^ that isn’t totally true. Lots of major PP organizations require a spine fellowship to take spine call. So you’ll see lots of people do a fellowship just for that reason… pretty sure Kaiser requires it for west coast jobs

[Guest]

This guy is total right. Those attendings at Barrow, Carolinas, and Semmes Murphy who did a spine fellowship definitely blew a year in fellowship because they ended up in PP.

There are way too many personal and financial reasons people take jobs. Ignoring that is pretty ignorant. If you think you're going to get a job at a top PP group without a fellowship you're dreaming.

[Guest]

So to be in academics you need fellowship, we all got that. What if you are looking away from academics? Which programs prepare you for practice out of residency?