Penn State Hershey Medical Center

First Impressions: I was supposed to have had this interview last month, but a huge snowstorm had forced me to reschedule. Several residents told me that the fellows at Penn State work really hard but get an excellent education, so I was pretty sure the program itself was excellent. I'd heard that Hershey was in the middle of nowhere, but it was still a surprise to see how isolated it was when I drove there after work. It was dark, and there were barely any lights to be seen except from the lone farmhouse. I kept looking for a cluster of lights to show that I was in town; no such luck, as there was a single-lane road (appropriately named "Chocolate Ave") that led to the hotel. I did grab dinner at a small hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurant that was actually pretty good; got a chef's special (California roll topped with salmon and shredded lemon). I'd booked a cheap hotel room for the night, which was a bit of a let-down since the last hotel I'd slept in was the Gaylord National, but safe enough. My only complaint was that the room was cold despite the heater being on, and I'd forgotten about how I never sleep well the night before interviews. Woke up around 3 a.m., couldn't really sleep after that.
Pre-Interview dinner: None
Interview Day: No traffic getting to PSHMC, and parking was free. There were eight applicants today, one of whom was the sister of one of my classmates. Most of us were from PA. We sat in on grand rounds with the topic of the day being hormone therapy for breast cancer (a particular interest of mine so I paid very close attention), then had the program director spend about 45 min telling us about the program and the hospital itself. The PD was very charismatic and energetic; it was obvious he loved what he did and took pride in the program.

I had three interviews: one with the chief of heme/onc, one with a leader in BMT, and a rad onc attending. Unfortunately for me, the chief and I didn't seem to connect very well. He had only been at the program for a year and was formerly from UPenn (that alone probably counted against me), and his specialty was translational research. Not surprisingly a lot of his questions were directed about future research I'd like to do (rather than research I'm doing now and would have been very happy to tell him about), and he ended up doing most of the talking. I'm not even sure how much he wanted to conduct this interview; we'd already started 5 minutes late because he was working on other things up until the last minute. My second interview with the BMT attending was a little better; he actually knew the former TCOM dean from their days at PSHMC and asked if I knew where Dr. MH was now. I didn't know the answer then, but since I got home I looked him up and found that he's now the dean at UNECOM in Maine. *sigh* I guess now we'll be seeing UNECOM rise in US World News Report in the next few years.

After the first two interviews we went to breast conference and then had lunch. My last interview was supposed to be with a GI attending who just happened to be on service, so they gave my file to a rad onc attending who doesn't even deal with the heme/oncs much since his focus is XRT in GU/gyn malignancies. He, too, was a fairly new attending, so we chatted instead about his transition from Cleveland to Hershey (i.e. learning to adjust to small town life), where to buy organic food (1 hr drive from Hershey!) and more. After that we had a tour of the hospital with two third-year-fellows who were fun to talk to. One of the best things about this place is the fellows' cubicles; large windows, plenty of light and computers, just no privacy. We also learned that fellows only round on the BMT service on weekends (and units); the onc inpatients are cared for by housestaff. That's good since at HUH the weekend fellows round on EVERYONE, even the inpatients.

Overall Impression:
Pros: Lots of diverse pathology, specialists within each department (breast, lung, colorectal, heme, etc) for focused treatment and care, brand new cancer center, plenty of research opportunities in either clinical or laboratory settings. 3 fellows a year. Harrisburg about 20 minutes away, Philadelphia 1 hr away by train (1.5 hr by car)
Cons: Hershey. Small rural town, lonely place to live if you're not married with children. Emphasis on research and academic careers.