Insights on Residency Training

September 5th, 2019

Building Your Squad — Residency and Beyond

Ellen Poulose-Redger, MD

At nearly every stage in our education and training, we find “our people.”  Maybe it’s your table-mate in kindergarten, or the kid with the really cool light up sneakers in preschool who becomes your best friend.  Maybe it’s your next-door neighbor who you play with after school, or a coworker from your first job in […]

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August 28th, 2019

Status: Post-Residency Syndrome

Ashley McMullen, MD

Today, I’m thinking about the end of residency. But first, let me tell you about the beginning of residency. My first day of clinic, my very first week of residency, I had a grand total of one patient scheduled. A seasoned outgoing resident had given me sign-out on this person, along with some big, knowledgeable […]

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August 20th, 2019

Bias in the Residency Ranking Process

Scott Hippe, MD

“Can we please try to be objective about this!” I said these words to myself over and over during this year’s interview season as we formulated our residency rank list. At my institution, the residents and faculty have equal sway in forming the rank list. The chief resident facilitates the resident half of the process. […]

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August 9th, 2019

Duty Hours: Can We Lay This Debate To Rest?

Cassandra Fritz, MD

Duty hours have been the focus of a lot of research recently. If you are just joining this discussion, the iCOMPARE trial randomized 63 internal medicine residency programs to either flexible (interns could work more than 16 hours) or standard (interns had to work within the 16-hour limit) work hours. The results so far have […]

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April 11th, 2019

The Nephrology Social Media Collective

Justin Davis, MBBS

Thinking back on it now, I can’t quite recall why I first decided to get a Twitter account. My suspicion is that I wanted to follow the amusing tweets of Jim Sterling who works in the videogame industry and whose work I closely follow. What did happen, of course, is that I eventually realised that, […]

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March 14th, 2019

Musings on Match Day, the Conception Day of our Residencies

Ellen Poulose-Redger, MD

Match Day. The one day that medical students across the United States all simultaneously look forward to and also fear. It’s really a whole week of roller-coaster emotions: on Monday we find out if we matched somewhere, and on Friday we find out where. (And, in between, if we unfortunately didn’t match, we scramble to find a position that is […]

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February 26th, 2019

My Primary Care Manifesto

Scott Hippe, MD

“She is meant for more than just primary care,” mused an attending on my internal medicine rotation in medical school. He was referring to a particularly adept resident with whom we were working. This resident was planning on practicing clinic-based general internal medicine. I wasn’t sure why this attending disclosed his thoughts regarding this resident […]

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February 19th, 2019

Do You Have a Peer Mentor? Do You Need One?

Cassandra Fritz, MD

Cassandra Fritz, MD, is a Chief Resident at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, MO Mentorship is a common topic in medicine. We, as a profession, spend significant time discussing, attending workshops about, and researching the role of mentorship. Mentorship is key to personal development, career choice, and improved academic productivity. Yet, it wasn’t […]

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January 30th, 2019

I’m Sad That Interns Don’t Want to Do a Palliative Care Rotation

Justin Davis, MBBS

It’s an exciting time for final-year medical students in Australia. Exams are over. They’re in their last-ever clinical rotations, and they’ve finally found out in which hospital they’ll be starting their careers. Most are happy. Perhaps some aren’t, I dunno. But most are simply excited to finally start their intern year as doctors, having spent 8 or more […]

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January 5th, 2019

I Call BS on Work–Life Balance

Ellen Poulose-Redger, MD

Physician wellbeing, burnout, and “work-life balance” are pretty common topics in training.  We start at intern orientation, discussing how to work 80 hours a week, eat, sleep, exercise, and still have some semblance of a social life.  It’s like we’ve forgotten the origins of our job title: “resident” or “house staff” — implying that, until recently […]

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