Q: How many residents (aka best friends) are there in the residency program?
A: Seven residents total
In the year 2025-2026 there will be:
PGY-2: 2
PGY-3: 2
PGY-4: 1
PGY-5: 2
Q: What is the rotation schedule?
A: Rotations consist of two month blocks as seen in the example below. You will be assigned to a specific team or elective block. Each team covers 2-4 disease sites with designated attendings per site. Most of your core rotations will take place at LA General Medical Center with at least 6 months at Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Elective months can include a brachy rotation, research, or exploring various learning opportunities (medical oncology, radiology, ENT, neurosurgery, dosi/physics, etc).
A one month pediatrics rotation will take place at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
Q: What is the patient population at LAGMC?
A: LA General Medical Center (formerly LAC+USC) is a Level 1 trauma center serving the greater Los Angeles area and is one of the largest safety net hospitals in the nation. This gives the residents and staff an ability to care for an undeserved population as many patients do not have alternative access to health care. A majority of the patients are Spanish-speaking only, and there are ample interpretation services available. However, it is also a good opportunity to learn Spanish if you are so inclined. Diverse presentations of disease are seen including early stage to very advanced cancers.
Q: What is the structure of your follow up clinic?
A: One of the highlights of our program is our continuity clinic.
At the start of residency, you will inherit the follow up clinic of a senior that is leaving. From that point on, you will follow those patients until the end of residency. New patients are added to your follow up clinic when you complete their CT simulation/contours.
The benefit of this format is that you will have long-term relationships with your patients and it allows you to see the sequelae from treatment (acute and late toxicities) as well as success stories and failures. In recognition of the educational value procured by this form of clinic, the residents of the radiation oncology program were awarded the 2018 David. C. Leach award from the ACGME.
Q: Do you cross-cover for your co-residents?
A: If a co-resident is on vacation, you do NOT cross-cover their clinic. Attendings will cover their follow up clinic.
Q: How much elective time is a resident allotted?
A: 12 months (to be used for research, other clinical rotations of interest, or a mixture of both).
It is also possible to coordinate a year block of research time if requested.
Q: What is the call schedule like?
A: Home call is taken in 1 week blocks starting and ending on Thursday at midnight. Call is split evenly among the residents every year.
Q: How are didactics run?
A: Each Tuesday there are technical/planning lectures given by our site specific attendings or guest speakers (ex. Interventional radiology, Mohs – dermatology, proton lectures).
Each Friday a lecture topic is presented by a resident or attending (the topics are split evenly among the presenters each year). Attendings will give half the lectures, so each resident gives 2-3 lectures per year (senior residents usually give 3). Prior lectures are available to use as a starting off point for creation of these lectures.
Q: How is radiobiology run?
A: Radiobiology is given as a 1 hour lecture on Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 PM and lead by Dr. Salhia Bodour who is a translational genomics scientist at USC.
Q: How is physics run?
A: Physics lectures begin at 7:30 AM on Wednesdays until 9:00 AM. For the first hour, physicists from both LAC and Norris give physics lectures. One of the major implementations in our physics course has been dedicating the last 30 minutes of lecture to working through and answering prior RAPHEX questions, which all of us really like!
Q: How many days of vacation is allowed? And are there vacation rules?
A: You are allotted 24 weekdays of vacation per year.
Typically, we limit vacation time to no more than 7 days off per rotation (5 days max consecutively) with avoidance of 4 days from switch day. However, there are always exceptions for longer vacation! During elective time, your vacation days are up to you.
We coordinate within the residents at LAGMC to avoid more than 2 residents off at a time.
Q: Where do we eat during work hours? A: We have 3 cafeterias on campus that we can get free meals from for breakfast, lunch and dinner, that’s up to 9 meals a day! We get $30/day at County and $10/meal at Keck or Norris. Usually the residents at County eat at the County caf, which has great food, including vegan options and a fantastic salad bar! Sometimes we do GI rounds, where we walk to Norris/Keck to use our meal money and get snacks or Kombucha from there!
Q: What are our educational benefits?
We have great benefits! We are allotted $2000 per year in educational funds to cover the cost of travel for conferences, textbooks, review courses, and a one time purchase of a new electronic device (example: laptop or iPad).
Q: Is there a union we can join?
Yes! Residents have the option of becoming members of the SEIU Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR) which provides up to $1400 in yearly reimbursement for various expenses including board exams, licensing application and biennial license renewal . Additionally, there is a Patient Care Fund (PCF) from which representatives from each specialty use to request capital acquisitions to improve patient care. The fund comes from prior residents who pooled money instead of taking a salary raise for the purpose of improving care for an undeserved patient population. In recent years our rad onc program has acquired prone breast boards, CBCT, 4D-CT, rectal ultrasound probe for brachytherapy, QA phantom, and conformal arc software.
Q: What’s the health insurance like?
Residents are given an “allowance” separate from our paycheck to spend on various benefits including individual and family health, dental, vision, and disability/life insurance. The plans are comprehensive with low co-payments and deductibles. Money that is left over after selecting these benefits is added to the resident’s paycheck or put into a Flexible Spending Account. Most residents are on CIR’s provided insurance, CAPE Blue Shield. This is available to residents who are part of our union, CIR.
Q: LA’s expensive! Do we get any money for housing?
Yes- thank you to CIR for advocating for our housing stipend! Current housing stipend is $10,000 per year. This is in addition to the educational fund we get through CIR, along with all the salary increases CIR has negotiated for us!