UCLA-Harbour and UC Irvine

Apologies for the lack of updates, but April was a time of travel and vacationing, so I ended up neglecting my duties! Continuing the list of interviewing schools to discuss, we have UCLA-Harbour and UC Irvine up next!

UCLA-Harbour 

4 categorical spots

Residents: This is a really small program with six permanent faculty. Two of the residents came to the supper and were incredibly friendly and helpful. They gave us a breakdown on the program and the work-life balance. They were very honest, and it seemed like they all bonded as a family in the way that they cover for each other and make lasting relationships.

Intern year is really intense, but it sounds like relatively it’s chiller than other programs. It’s currently a transitional year design, with two months of neurology ward squeezed in, two months of surgery (blegh), and other essential rotations. Scutwork is exclusively in this year as the team is big enough that you just have to focus on learning the neurology PGY-2 while pawning off the busywork to the interns. Sort of like a rite of passage, but it seems that this program produces strong general neurologists that go places afterwards if they choose to do so. PGY-2 mainly rotates among wards, consult, and VA at Long Beach, and it seems pretty doable in terms of having chiller blocks and then hard ones. There’s a lot of elective time set in PGY-3 to explore interests or do auditions at away sites; there are a lot of opportunities to go to UCLA, cedars sinai, and UCI. Curriculum seems resident responsive.

Call schedule is good where there’s a good amount of people to divvy up the work; weekend calls are not that frequent as they are divided up with the family medicine and psychiatry residents, which is really nice. The residents are open to trading their calls to accommodate if needed/wanted.

Pros

• Lots of connections with UCLA, Cedars Sinai, UCI, and UCSD
• Lasting relationships with faculty and residents even after graduation
• 24Hr call only in PGY-2, house calls afterwards
• Fellowship in sleep, epilepsy, neurophysiology
• Autonomy in work at the big county hospital so will see a lot of bread and butter of neurology
• Friendly supervision but a lot of hands on opportunities
• Definitely read my personal statement (“did you choose your hammer or did the hammer choose you?”)
• AAU group for research

Cons

• Small program with not a lot of strength in subspecialties
• Only one fellowship offered at UCLA-harbour
• Weaker research capacity
• Open neurocritical unit, nurses are not specially trained
• Not as much focus on medicine: residents seem to really dislike the practice of medicine and just want to focus on neurology and leaving everything else to consults; they seem to rely heavily on the medicine and view the medicine in intern year as something to get rid of quickly
• Less academia in training and less of the zebras showing up at UCLA-Harbor

Overall, this seems like a much more relaxed program that gives both autonomy and more freedom to mold your own personal schedule. It seems like the workload is not as bad, but it does concern me of whether that’s a good thing. While there is a lot of hands-on components to the program, and they trust you in your decision-making, I wonder if that’s the ideal situation for learning to occur. I don’t know if I would feel comfortable calling the shots as a new intern or as a PGY-2; there have been new things in place to help with the learning (staffing with attendings for overnight calls to run through the differential thinking), but I’m not sure that’s the best method of learning for me. I feel that the medicine training is not as encouraged here, but it does seem like it’s a very choose-your-own-adventure kind of deal. The other thing I’m concerned about is the patient diversity seen; looks like there is a lot of minorities and underserved population (I was somewhat impressed with the “epigenetics”-type of research being done on the Hispanics population during the morning conference) especially the Spanish-speaking, but I don’t get the feeling that there’s a lot of zebras an academic-geared training here. Though, it does feel like you can easily get that by going to UCLA or Cedars Sinai.

UC Irvine

5 categorical spots

Residents: so it’s super obvious that the residents are very cohesive, work as a team, and get along well. It also seems that they have good relations with the neurosurgery team seeing as one of them is dating the neurology chief resident and came to supper with us. In fact, I felt like we were a little neglected since they were just talking amongst themselves so much! They were very forthcoming with information; it’s a tough program, but it’s definitely reasonable and doable. Days run 0630 to 1700 or 1800. They appreciate the structured didactics that occur weekly, and they like the interaction and support from the attending physicians. Their calls are 24Hr over the weekends, but they find it pretty doable. Seems like they have a lot of fun outside of work, and they don’t mind the research that’s required of them.

Preliminary year is split among UCI, Memorial long beach, and VA Long beach with 3-week intensive block paired with a 1-week lighter block. A few ICU rotations will be done at Memorial, but most of the time is spent between VA and UCI at a relatively equal proportion.

He recommended to do pathology and complementary medicine (i.e. acupuncture) during elective time (there are 4 blocks of it).

Pros

• Strong stroke and neuro-ICU program; they also touted their epilepsy, but I didn’t really get that feel from the representation of epilepsy students/fellows
• Large stroke catchman area and lots of clinical-oriented research being done
• Strong AD research/clinical practice relative to UCLA and UCSd
• Pretty decent movement disorders (I think this was the most well-formed one thusfar): proteomics/genomics sequencing done in PD patients and possibly AD/other cognitive neurodegenerative diseases to power personalized medicine; 3 movement faculty!
• Diverse and cool attendings that are multitalented (Dr. Small studies aphasia and language in his lab and in his clinical work; he was a math major and French minor)
• Neuro-oncology is up and coming with a new fellowship
• A good amount of fellowships: EEG, epilepsy, neuro-oncology, stroke
• Required yearly research projects
• Lots of structured didactics throughout the week
• Prelim program director (a little kooky, wore a Snoopy tie and also demands his students to attend his family theatre shows or threatens to give them hell-call schedules) interviewed us as part of the panel and gave us a spiel about the structure of the program
• Prelim people have FUN: academy of medicine (3 Hr Friday morning lectures during non-inpatient rotations), Best case of the block (reward for best/interesting case and presentation for it)

Cons

• Weak migraine/HA representation
• More clinically oriented research instead of strong academic research
• Has a little bit less tout relative to UCSD neurology (has Scripps and Salk to amass neuroscience faculty), young program
• A little bothered by the fact that the residents and attendings seemed to keep telling me that they have a good program, but they don’t go into real specifics