What brought me to VCU
was the people. The day that I
interviewed here,
people here made me feel belong.
Our overarching mission is to take them
from that medical student stage into a
practicing radiologist. I think our
faculty is diverse, our training is
diverse, so it makes them
fit in. All our faculty members really
care for their residents.
Interventional radiology trainees, rather
than doing a
diagnostic radiology residency and then
an IR fellowship,
enter out of medical school into an
integrated training program
wherein they receive the diagnostic
radiology training
as well as interventional radiology
training that allows
trainees to be involved on the clinical
side of interventional radiology
earlier in their training. You have
faculty and mentorship above that
is very receptive to
you know things that can be improved in
the program. Having us as
the residents from each class being
involved in that process was
pretty instrumental. We don't have a lot
of fellows, so we were very
resident-driven.
Our residents do everything. It offers
the pathology
and the volume that I was looking for in
a level-one
trauma, academic center, tertiary care,
without an astronomical
cost of living or a slew of fellows to
compete with
for the most interesting cases on the
list. With my program in particular, with
interventional radiology,
it's very hands-on learning from the
residents above and then teaching the
residents below.
It's important to strike a good balance
between supervision and autonomy.
As the trainees progress through the
program,
this balance shifts towards one of
supervision to autonomy
as they gain skills, competence, and
confidence.
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You have level one trauma, you have all
the transplant services,
between all of that you pretty much
see everything that you're gonna see in
practice.
We train them in different modalities. We
have a lot of
different sub-specialties within the
hospital. I couldn't imagine training
somewhere better, to be honest.
With the volume you see and the caseload
we see,
and then add in on top of that the fact
that we have such good camaraderie with
the residents,
that was an added bonus that you don't
know until you get there, but
it's here. We have the opportunity to
work at several different
locations which are all for the most
part located primarily downtown,
and each offer different experiences
within clinical radiology
and exposure to different patient
populations. The residents spend a fair
number
of rotations of their second year
radiology residency
at the VA, which in my opinion has the
best
patient population that we work with and
also offers a lot of
independence and freedom for residents
too, at work. There's a lot of
opportunities to
see different and new technologies here
for sure. We do a lot of cool things like
MR
fusion biopsies for prostate glands and
things like that
which not a lot of programs have. We have
all the tools
you need to succeed at VCU. We do have
a lot of autonomy when we're on call
but also when we need direct supervision,
attendings can give us feedback on the
cases that we do during the day, and the
feedback
usually comes instantly. And they can see
exactly
what i'm looking at on my screen at the
same time, so we
never feel unsafe or uncomfortable when
taking care of the patient.
At VCU we have a lot of educational
resources that
will help us to succeed. We provide staff
DX for all the residents.
We have shared drive that is a place
the residents can upload the useful
information for the rotations for
learning,
for core exam, and all the books that we
need.
We have several opportunities to
interact with and teach medical students.
The most unique opportunity that we have
is our cadaver project,
where we meet up with medical students
and take their cadavers to the CT
scanner
and they're able to use those images to
study anatomy. We're able to
moonlight after work and also on the
weekends. You can work as little or as
much as you want
and it's a great way to make extra money.
It's comfortable and that's key here.
Now comfort doesn't mean that you don't
get challenged, but it's comfortable in
the sense that
the faculty is really warm and welcoming.
Faculty is really approachable.
they are there when I need help.
We talk about about life,
about the family, so I feel like it's a
really warm environment.
Working in a group of very close-knit
people
does make residency, which is very
stressful,
easier. We learn a lot but we also like
to have a good time
outside of work as well. Richmond
actually I think is a very underrated
city.
I really love richmond because
we can do a lot of things outside work.
There's a lot of cool things to do
outdoors,
indoors, whether you want to go to the
mountains or the beach,
whether you want to go to a bigger city,
DC is just a short drive away as well.
It is a great place to live and it's a
great place to
do residency. When you're doing your
radiology residency here,
you will find that you have the right
balance between your work life
and your outside of work life. They're
successful when they find a place to
practice where they're happy. For some of
them that means they go
do a fellowship in a prestigious
institution, but some of them
they can go right into private practice
and thrive.
you'll be very trained to go wherever
you want to go. I had a really good
vibe during my interview here that
that's the kind of program that it was,
and it turned out to be true so it was
great!