View USF
http://www.hsc.usf.edu/medicine/neurosurgery/residency/index.htm
At USF we tend to fly below the UH radar. We’re a 2/year program with just one resident in the PGY3 and 4 slots, so we have 10 residents currently, not including our two interns. Between the four hospitals we cover, I think we do just over 3200 cases per year. Our chairman, Harry van Loveren, in addition to being a skull base guru is a very approachable and a “work hard/play hard” type of chairman. Fernando Vale is our PD and is an excellent resident advocate and a superb surgeon. Our chiefs operate at Tampa General Hospital, where we currently have 30 neuro ICU beds and generally run at least three to four rooms a day. We will move to our new 34 bed neuro ICU in October. Our chiefs and residents take their pick of cases before the one skull base/complex vascular and one spine fellow. A PGY6 resident and the neuro-oncology fellow operate at the Moffitt Cancer Center. A PGY3 resident covers the busiest VA hospital in the country (for better or worse) where we have one of four VA dedicated TBI centers and one of three VA spinal cord injury centers. We also operate at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg where we now have six pediatric attendings and where a completely new hospital building will be completed in 2009.
We have a good depth and breadth of all specialties of neurosurgical practice covered with the possible exception of complex peripheral nerve surgery. We do a ton of spine, including degenerative, traumatic, and oncologic surgeries. We don’t do much scoliosis. Dr. van Loveren’s skull base fellowship is one of the most competitive in the country and not surprisingly we get a broad diversity of complex skull base cases. The Moffitt is the third busiest dedicated cancer center in the country. We do over sixty resective epilepsy surgeries per year and as such are one of the busiest epilepsy centers in the country. We are slated to start a six month mandatory rotation with our endovascular guys sometime in the next year. We do operate early and have considerable autonomy in the OR. Following in the vein of a similar post in this thread, I could do an ACDF by myself by the end of my PGY2 year and I clipped my first aneurysm as a PGY3 (skin to skin. Ok, it was an elective MCA).
Our program graduated its first resident a mere 11 years ago, so we have grown exponentially and continue to do so. As far as research opportunities we currently are ranked #9 in the country for NIH funding and we have at least 12 PhD researchers in the department investigating a broad range of diseases. Generally the PGY5 year is reserved for electives and/or research. The only call we cover then is when someone at TGH goes on vacation. We have a spine biomechanics lab with biomedical engineering PhD and masters students. We have a microvascular lab available at the USF vivarium and a cadaver lab available 24/7 across the street from the hospital.
We have a number of midlevel providers that help out at each of the hospitals with admits, h&p’s, discharges, and clinic. We are therefore able to adhere to the 80 hour work week without the 8 hour extension. We have plenty of didactics and conferences at each of the places we cover. Currently call at TGH is q4 in house, q4-5 home call at ACH, q2 home call at the Moffitt (it’s pretty light, really), and q1 home call with an in-house intern at the VA with two out of three weekends off. Our program is not malignant in the least, but I wouldn’t consider it cushy either. We get loupes, books, conferences, courses, lead, etc all paid for. My fellow residents are all great guys (and one girl) and we represent cultures from every continent except for Antarctica and Oceania.
Life in Tampa is pretty sweet. Yes, it gets hot and humid in the summer, but for the rest of the nine months it’s better here than in most of the rest of the country. Tampa is a nice size, big enough to get the benefits of a big city but not so big that it’s a hassle to live here. The cost of living is low, our salaries are set at 60% percentile in the country, so we tend to have a pretty good standard of living. Moonlighting is generally approved (if you stay within your hours wink ) although I’m not sure how much longer that’s going to be realistic or feasible.