since this website is pretty much run by Pitt residents, can you let me know if there are going to be anymore interview invites sent out in Jan for Pitt?

So as you all know, this forum is obsessed with Barrow. Barrow this, Barrow that, How does this program compare to Barrow, etc. Literally every thread mentions Barrow. 





So I decided to look into the matter myself. I looked up Barrow grads, to see what they are doing. I looked up research at Borrow, so see just what is going on. And I read up on Barrow online, to get a clearer view. 





What I saw disturbed me greatly, and I wish to share my results here. 

1. Virtually all Barrow grads go into PP. nothing wrong with PP, but if you want to advance the field you have to do academic and Barrow is very, very poor in that. If you want to do research, you can't go to Barrow. 
   
2. Many Barrow grads go into shady pain practices. Those places that do surgery for pain. Problem is, research has shown that in the vast majority of cases, surgery doesn't help. A lot of Barrow grads are doing this medically unnecessary spine surgery for money and are cheating patients. Very disturbing.
   
3. Mid-levels do initial consultation and follow-up. As a result, residents are very weak in this areas. Barrow is arranged as a mill that tries to see as many patients as possible and it also engages in some questionable medical practices for money, being strongly fee-for-service. 
   
4. Residents don't spend the extra free time in the lab or cadaver lab. Rather, they place softball and post here a lot. Why aren't they doing research or doing productive things
   
5. The research at Barrow is very, very, weak. The major neurosurgical publications are dominated by Harvard, Mayo and other "elite/Iyv" programs. But to my horror, I could nary find a Barrow pub in a top journal. 
   
6. Patient care is questionable, as residents operate unsupervised. 
   

Hello friends,

I was wondering if current interns and residents could recommend any ways (books, lectures, etc.) to better prepare an M4 for intern year. I'm basically doing nothing in my last year and I feel like I'm forgetting a lot that I learned on my sub-internships.

How does Cornell fare as a place to become an academic neurosurgeon? Will you become well trained?

Thoughts on JNS case lessons? As someone interested in Neurosurgery, better to publish here (but no pubmed index), or other non-neurosurgery journals that are actually pubmed indexed?

What's everyones take on Mt. Sinai in NYC as a training program? I know they're smaller, with a complement of about 2 residents a year. 

I assume call burden is going to suck majorly.

Does anyone know much about the residency program at U Cincinnati? How is the rapport there, the residents, what is the PD like, the lifestyle, etc.? Is it a female or POC friendly program?

I am a junior neurosurgical attending practicing for three plus years now.  I have been hospital employed health system. The pay is good, but the bending over to the health system, and inability to pick my staff is frustrating.  It seems to me that generation before us, which sold their practices to the health systems, had the bargaining power and could stand up to hospital administrations to advocate for themselves.   In our current systems I feel we are losing that.  
 
This issue is the current private jobs out there seem to be from bigger groups and a pyramid scheme which you can never really become an equal.  Going solo has a high barrier for entry and big EMR systems are making this a more difficult option.  

What are other people experiencing out there?  Is independent practice gone?  Are some people happy working in the employed systems and if so, what are some of the things that help.  One of my bigger frustrations is being on call for many hospitals that I don’t go to, and getting called for clearly non-surgical stuff by a growing number of NP/PA’s that don’t’ know how to manage non-operative spine.  If the radiologist says anything on the report they don’t understand, they call and write down any narrative they want in the chart.  Then the CMO’s try to encourage remote management without ever seeing the patient.  Private ortho spine attendings refuse to take call ED call, take block time at the health system, and when their post ops hit the ED, they reflexively call the on-call for their post ops and if push comes to shove we have to take their post-op complications.
Who’s having a better time out there?  What's our options ?

Have been trying to track this but curious if anyone has a list/insight - what programs do a night float system, or have lighter call burdens? Not the most important thing, but does matter and sometimes hard to figure out from interviews.

been getting a lot of "you have great letters"...if you went to a home program than had 10-15 rotators/sub-I, do they all have great letter of recs? is there multiple people from the same institution that get the " top 1%" on the letter of recs. curious if any residents/faculty can comment on that.