Originally Posted: 2001-10-21 00:07
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As for Iowa's program, it is one of the older programs around graduating many people who have gone on to do well. Both departments provide very solid education within their fields. The internal medicine program is a fairly typical academic type program with most of the patient care the responsibility of residents with faculty supervision, rather than the private hospital residencies where the faculty do most patient care and the residents "help out".

The psychiatry program is one of the more biologically based programs you'll find. I believe I have developed excellent skills in diagnosis, treatment, and the empirically validated treatments. Experience with psychodynamic approaches is very limited in Iowa.

I don't know how familiar you are with US geography and what the different cities are like, but Iowa City is a small college town in the middle of farm land of Iowa. The hospital there is a huge medical center and a big part of the people in Iowa City are either empolyed by the university or the medical center. There are no big cities close by, but Chicago is about 4 hours away by car. It is a very safe area with low crime. It is a great place to raise a family as the public schools are very good. There is not very much diversity among the population with 98% being white (in Iowa state, Iowa City is more diverse than the rest of the state).

Overall, it is a very solid med-psych residency program.

Of the places you listed, I am only familiar with Rush's program and Duke's program. Rush is located in Chicago which you have probably heard about. I grew up near Chicago and now that I'm done with residency, I moved back near where I grew up. I interviewed at Rush for both medical school and residency. When I interviewed for residency, it was just starting out as a program, which made me reluctant to go there compared to other more established programs. It now has many residents and has graduated a few. It is overall a solid program, but is more of a private hospital type model. The psychiatry program is more balanced than Iowa, but I don't believe their faculty have as much of a research interest as Iowa. Rush does have several faculty who are top notch researchers and publishers, but the majority of their faculty are clinically based. You would certainlly get better psychodynamic training at Rush.

Duke's program is probaby the strongest as far as reputation. Duke is located in North Carolina in a college town. I have never been there, but I believe it is bigger than Iowa City, and closer to medium sized cities. Their internal medicine program is one of the top in the country. When I was looking at residencies, now 5 years ago, they had a reputation of being very hard on their residents, often having very high service demands. I believe that is not so much the case now. I don't know too much about their psychiatry program, but I think it is probably pretty average.

In addition to the programs you listed, you should consider University of Rochestor's program in New York, as I know several of the residents (and graduates) from there and they seemed to be very knowledgable (and nice).