Tough week with four interviews!

The Drexel interview went well last week. I'm still trying to schedule a second look at their CCU where they complete about seven months of training. It's a solid program with good people in downtown Philadelphia.

Over the weekend I had a couple really good shifts at Christiana. I finally got to see some of the trauma and procedures that I knew could be found here. I saw two motor vehicle deaths and was allowed to listen to one of the Attendings talk with the family. It was a good learning opportunity and I am glad I sat through it. Tough to explain to the adult children how family members died unexpectedly, but it's something that Emergency Physicians have to be able to do.

Then I had most of the week off to complete three interviews. I only worked on Thursday at the secondary hospital in Wilmington. It's a more urban location and patient population. I had a good time there as well. I also got a chance to talk ask one of the residents a lot of questions about Christiana. I'm looking forward to my interview on Tuesday so I can ask the leadership some questions.

Monday I drove to upstate New Jersey and had dinner with the Morristown residents. They were incredibly nice. During the interview, I got the feeling that it's a small residency with very nice people that has a family feel. You get lots of face time with Attendings. The residents and attendings are very close. Morristown is also a nice area for families. For trauma you go to Newark, NJ to see penetrating trauma.

Wednesday I interviewed at Cooper in lower New Jersey. It also impressed me more than I expected but for different reasons. The Program Director is very impressive and I like their unique track system where you use your RRC required scholarly project to concentrate on an area of interest that you can list on your CV. The trauma and pathology is more acute for the patient volume than most places. Camden, NJ is a very poor area with lots violent crime. It would also give us the option of living near Philadelphia so Becky's job opportunities would be great.

Friday, today, was the most surprising of all. But first, I had to get to Baltimore. I got off work in Wilmington at 4pm last night. The resident dinner was at 6:30pm. I thought that would be plenty of time to drive down about 65 miles with a quick stop at my hotel room to change out of scrubs and grab a bite to eat. Well, the Wilmington traffic was horrible. It took me over an hour to get 7 miles from the hospital to my hotel room! So I spent an hour chilling out and hoping rush hour traffic would die down a bit. After all, I was going into Baltimore so it should be against traffic. However, construction on the main freeway, I-95, turned a 57-mile drive into a three and half hour parking lot. I kept thinking it would speed up once we passed some fatality accident. But they just kept reducing lanes after miles and miles of more stop than go traffic. Six lanes reduced to one for no apparent reason! They didn't seem to be doing any work on the road at all!

I arrived at the hotel, Mt. Washington Conference Center, at 10pm. The bar where I was supposed to meet the residents was the closest place to get food so I walked thinking I was going to foot the bill for a very late dinner. After inquiring though, four residents were still there. All the other applicants had already headed home. We talked for two hours over a couple glasses of Guiness, which greatly helped me recover from the drive down. The appetizers filled me up at well. I got six and a half hours of good sleep.

Hopkins itself is incredible. Their are three cranes there right now building the largest hospital expansion in history. A two billion(!) dollar expansion including a new ED. However, it won't be ready until early 2011 according to the latest estimates. I really liked the residents, including the three D.O.'s there now. No overblown egos, just lots of nice friendly people, many of whom are world renowned for writing our textbooks are publishing prominent studies. The Mt. Washington offices are opulent and were effective at demonstrating how well funded the Emergency Department is. Friday is conference day at Hopkins, and the training seemed very good. Then we took a tour of the city even though most of the applicants knew the city as well as our guides. It's a nice place of about 650,000 that would offer a reasonable cost of living with lots of opportunities for Becky. The Hopkins ED was fairly plain, but seemed more than adequate for a place to get good training. And finally the interviews were, like everywhere else, low key and a friendly Q & A session with equal time for both parties to ask questions.

I left really impressed. They are now a four year program, so the decision really comes down to whether that fourth year will pay for itself either financially or in new opportunities. I think it would, especially with the Hopkins name backing it up. And they have 12 tracks to choose from, which I don't think could be offered at any other institution. Education, administration and ultrasound are the most interesting to me right now. In the end, I would put Hopkins at the top of my list of places I've interviewed so far. My top four will probably end up being UConn, UMass, Christiana and Hopkins but I have no idea what order they will ranked. Cooper and Maricopa may also make it in there.

Lots to think about. It's been a very stressful week nailing down four of the five interviews while I'm here in the MidAtlantic region. Plus I nailed down St. Vincent's and Case Western/Cleveland Clinic in January and Maricopa in two weeks back in Phoenix. I also got a number of rejections. The only one that is really disappointing is OHSU. MUSC was equally surprising, but not nearly as disappointing. Financially my current schedule will be much more doable with only two more trips. The amazing thing is that the numbers are working exactly like I was shooting for. Five interviews while I'm here at Christiana and ten total. I actually have eleven if I don't cancel MCG, plus I'm still on the waiting list at three programs and there's five or six I haven't heard from yet. But I'm pretty satisfied.

My Tuesday interview is just me for three half hour sessions with the Christiana leadership. I'm a little nervous about that one since it will be just me with no warm and fuzzy introduction to the program over lunch. At least I have one of my two days off this month the day before it. What a month!!