First Impressions: MetroHealth provided a five-page list of hotels with discounted prices, and I ended up choosing a hotel in downtown Cleveland that provided shuttle service to the hospital and cost only $80 per night, which allowed me to spend two nights there since I planned to fly to Chicago the morning after my interview. It only cost $2 to ride from the airport to Tower City (a downtown shopping center), where I then rode a free trolley to the hotel.Pre-Interview dinner: Dinner was held at the Metropolitan Cafe downtown, which was easily accessible by taxi. There were four residents and about 5-6 applicants there. We were given a menu from which we could choose one of about 5-6 entrees, and I chose the highly recommended Atlantic salmon. The residents were very nice and had great things to say about MetroHealth, and one of the 2nd years gave me and another resident a ride to the hotel afterwards.
Interview Day: Since I was staying an extra night in Cleveland, I didn't have to wake up earlier than usual to pack and went downstairs to take a shuttle to MetroHealth. There were about 10 of us total, and the PD came and talked to us about the program and what it has to offer. "I could spend the entire morning telling you stories of patients I've seen here," he said, and I found he was very friendly in that respect (which was good, since my first interview was with him). Overall I think my interview with him went very well. He gave me time to ask him questions before he asked me anything, and the questions he asked were pretty specific to my application. He asked me if I'd met the PD at UTMB-Austin, whom he's met on several occasions, and he asked me what novels I've read. I told him I liked mysteries but admitted to never reading any Sherlock Holmes novels, so he recommended them and said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the author) was a physician as well. Interestingly enough, I remembered from one of my favorite manga/anime series that Sherlock Holmes could tell a patient's profession just from looking at his hands, so we talked about that. The PD said that he has looked at patients' hands to see where calluses are to tell their profession, and I commented that years ago, my hands could have revealed that I was a violinist (fingers slightly longer and thinner on the left hand, calluses at the tips). At any rate it was a great interview.
My second interview was with one of the chief residents, who had gone to med school at OUCOM. Since she was a DO, I asked her some DO-specific questions like whether or not I should get my osteopathic internship approved. She was very nice and seemed very interested in hearing about my Borders without Boundaries trip when I told her that some towns have no doctors and had to rely on a helicopter 90 miles away to transport them to the nearest hospital should a situation arise. We had a tour of the general hospital area with some residents and then ate lunch before the chiefs took us on a tour to the medicine floors. The medicine floors are located in totally circular buildings (seen above) which provided an interesting layout of the rooms, but it was a nice touch. Overall I had a very favorable impression of MetroHealth.
Overall Impression:
Pros: University program that's mostly resident-run (PGY3s make all the decisions and have 1-1 time with the attending), similar to county hospital, "supervised autonomy," night float, faculty mentors assigned to each resident, good fellowship placement.
Cons: Not sure yet if I want to live in Cleveland.
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