09-28-2017, 05:26 PM
(09-28-2017, 10:41 AM)Guest Wrote:(09-13-2017, 01:32 AM)Guest Wrote: I would stay away from the BU program. I only rotated through the department as a student, but there was an unbelievable amount of animosity towards the chairman (from both fellows and attendings).
I would have never believed the stories I heard from the fellows regarding the chairman if I hadn't seen it myself. In the one month I was there, the chair had found out that two fellows were interviewing for positions outside of the match. I actually overheard him telling two other attendings that they were not allowed to write any recommendation letters or make any phone calls on behalf of the fellows unless it was cleared with him first. One program actually called a fellow to let him know that his own chairman was badmouthing him (apparently the chair is not well-liked in the neurosurgical community). During this past interview season, the fellows would lie about what programs they were interviewing at, because it was so well-known that the chairman made it his mission to sabotage you. This was purely based on the fact that he wanted to keep the fellows around as long as he could.
But...If you don't include the chairman, the other attendings were very helpful.
The more experienced fellows (2-3 years) were able to do the majority of operative cases on their own, requiring minimal assistance - I even saw one fellow clip an aneurysm. However, the operative experience seemed to be the only positive in the program. The fellows worked 100 hour weeks, every week. They got paid the same salary as the residents, but had no cap on hours.
if it wasn't for the poor administration, it would probably be a good program for students that didn't match and/or needed more experience. But with the way it is now, it's just not worth.
Definitely you are not a student. You did your pre-residency there and showed extreme unprofessionalism by not coming to work. You thought that you were smarter by lying about where you interviewed but almost all programs were aware of your weird behavior and definitely this did hurt your match. Try to please your new chair because he is aware of this. I know it's hard to survive 7 years at a program you ranked at the bottom and live in a shitty city in the south, but you have to get your shit together.
Thanks, Jim
