First Impressions: No housing provided, so I booked a room at a Red Roof Inn near Chinatown. When I arrived, the desk people found no trace of my reservation, but still gave me a room at a discounted price. After lunch in Chinatown I visited the Holocaust Museum (which was really good) and walked toward the Capitol before turning around and trying to find the White House. It was cold and drizzly, and my feet got tired so I gave up at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue (2 blocks away) and just went back to the hotel to rest. Still, from what I saw DC is a beautiful city downtown, and there's lots of museums to visit for free.
Pre-Interview dinner: None, so I went to a sushi restaurant across the street from the hotel.
Interview Day: I had to wake up at 5:45 a.m. (4:45 a.m. in Texas, ugh) to get ready, check out, and arrive at the Metro station by 6:30 to take the train to the station closest to Washington Hospital Center. There I joined others in boarding a shuttle bus to WHC. The hospital itself is HUGE (800+ beds if I remember correctly), the largest in the DC area and has the 13th highest patient volume in the US. There were about 18 of us total, prelims and categoricals combined, and I noticed that most of the categorical applicants were IMGs while the prelims were all US grads. Morning report was done on a tablet laptop that was then projected onto the screen, so we got to watch the chief resident go through the differentials with us. They also ranked differentials in terms of greatest likelihood, which I thought was interesting. Afterwards we were split in groups of three to follow the teams on attending rounds. My assigned "attending" was also the chief resident who gave morning report. We only saw about two patients with him before he left, and when I asked why, the residents said that the attendings round on the patients admitted to the teaching service, but the residents are on their own when taking care of the private patients. And there's no pre-rounding, which sounded a bit odd to me.
The PD then gave us a 1-hour long presentation about WHC and highlighted all its positive traits before interviews began. I was the first person to get interviewed by the PD, and we had a nice chat about what I'm looking for in a program and my past orchestra experiences (she'd overheard me and another applicant talking about being violinists when she came to get me). She said she'd always wondered what a conductor's gestures meant, and since I took a conducting class before I gave some examples of what a conductor does and how essential he is to the success of a performance. She thought that was interesting. My second interview was with a cardiologist who focuses on cardiac MRI. His first question was, "What can I tell you about the program?" but he really didn't have any questions for me. He did say that he liked my personal statement, so I tried to play up on that and told him about my hobbies including having perfect pitch, which has helped me in hearing heart sounds and murmurs (again, playing up to his cardiology background). He plays guitar so he seemed genuinely interested in that and said that if I ever come back to WHC, I should play for him. Unfortunately this breakthrough took place in the last 10 minutes of the interview, and if we're judged by the first 5 minutes of the interview, then it was too little too late.
Noon and beyond: We had lunch with the residents, all of whom seemed very friendly and genuinely liked being at WHC, before going on a tour around the hospital. The cafeteria was nice, and they had a Sim Lab (which I feel is a plus in most programs) and private call rooms, plus an on-site gym. There was also a portion of the hospital that looked like a 5-star hotel (for the patients willing to pay for it) but we couldn't see it b/c it was closed. There were also lots of cath labs; cardio seems to be big at this hospital. Afterwards, at the closing, we were asked to go around the room and each name something we learned about WHC and whether or not we had any concerns about the program. Since I was one of the last people to give my thoughts, it was a bit awkward to come up with something no one else had already said. A lot of the IMGs from India were concerned about whether or not they could take the 4 weeks of vacation all at once b/c if they're going to travel to India, they want to be there for a good amount of time.
Overall Impression:
Pros: Highly ranked hospital, large patient volume, decent program size (about 24 residents per class), good fellowship placement and research opportunities on site, q9 call on wards, 1 month elective in PGY-3 devoted to teaching (which I think I might be interested in), sim lab, faculty mentors (I think), Washington DC.
Cons: Not a university program, has non-teaching services with private attendings (which may or may not be a problem since private attendings usually tell residents what to do), >50% IMGs
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