Insights on Residency Training

May 27th, 2020

Virtual Residency Recruitment in the Time of COVID

Prarthna Bhardwaj, MD

COVID-19 has undeniably altered life as we know it. As if getting into residency wasn’t hard enough already, COVID has made it a notch harder. Graduate Medical Education across the nation is preferably adopting video interviews for a virtual residency recruitment. This noncontact change was further endorsed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). What […]

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May 19th, 2020

Safety Net: Reflections on the Elmhurst Experience

Eric Bressman, MD

Elmhurst 2014 I first arrived at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY, in the summer of 2014 as a medical student on my surgery rotation. We would take occasional night shifts as part of the trauma team. It was the first time I held a pager. Code yellow meant hurry, code red meant run. One of our […]

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May 12th, 2020

Our Public Hospital Leads Massachusetts in Caring for Coronavirus Patients

Frances Ue, MD, MPH

Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), where I work, is a small hospital system serving the north Boston-metro area across two campuses in Cambridge and Everett but, despite its modest scale, it has arguably become the center of Massachusetts’ fight against COVID-19. This is no small feat, given that Massachusetts has the third largest number of coronavirus […]

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April 30th, 2020

Why Is Burnout Still Occurring, Even with Work-Hour Restrictions?

Daniel Orlovich, MD, PharmD

“Daniel, this guy is one… sick… puppy,” he stated emphatically, drawing out the last three words.  I put my phone down and turned my chair away from the computer. He had my attention. Not because I haven’t taken care of any sick patients before, but because this statement was coming from him. I’m sure your hospital has […]

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April 24th, 2020

Pass or Fail — USMLE Step 1

Allison Latimore, MD

We All Take Tests In January 2020, it was announced by the US Medical Licensing Examination that USMLE Step 1 scoring would change from a 3-digit score to pass or fail. I’m sure some budding and current medical students are jumping for joy. Some residents and attendings probably are brooding jealously, thinking of all the stress, […]

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March 5th, 2020

Should We Avoid Exposing Residents to Coronavirus?

Eric Bressman, MD

The arrival of the novel coronavirus to the U.S., and the inevitability of its eventual spread, raises an interesting question: Should we avoid exposing residents to the virus? Before we try to answer this question, we should start with some important qualifiers. While a good deal about this novel virus remains unknown, the majority of […]

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February 26th, 2020

Medicare for All: The Healthcare Our Nation Needs

Frances Ue, MD, MPH

Over a month into the new year and feels like the world around us is in grave peril. There are many reasons to lose hope: the climate crisis with Australia’s wildfires, the evolving COVID-19 epidemic, the acquittal of the President’s impeachment charges, and the list goes on. Combined with long hours, sick patients, and seemingly never-ending […]

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February 18th, 2020

How Can Attendings Affect Resident Burnout?

Daniel Orlovich, MD, PharmD

A Sad Short Story Harvard medical school. Stanford general surgery training. Northwestern vascular surgery fellowship. Suicide. This devastating path, taken by a 33-year-old trainee in 2010, is not unique. An estimated one physician commits suicide every single day in the U.S. alone (JAMA 2014; 312:1725). A number of these lives are taken on the hospital premises, places […]

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February 6th, 2020

I’m Graduating from Residency! What’s Next?

Prarthna Bhardwaj, MD

My whole life, I have always wanted to do something that will be remembered. Becoming a physician was a hard but well-thought-out choice. Toward the end of my residency, I knew I wanted to be a hematologist-oncologist, but I had no idea what type of career pathway I wanted to pursue. During the APDIM Chief Resident Annual Meeting last year, […]

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January 31st, 2020

Sorry, We’re Transitioning

Allison Latimore, MD

“We are transitioning.” In July of my intern year, this was the sentence that the CEO of our community hospital used to tell the staff that the hospital was closing its inpatient services. The emotions that traversed my mind were quite vast, to say the least. Anger was undeniably at the top of the list, […]

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