Insights on Residency Training

December 12th, 2019

Why Did I Spend an Extra Year as a Chief Resident?

Prarthna Bhardwaj, MD

I was in conversation with a residency applicant recently when we broached the topic of my career plans. I explained that I was interested in pursuing a hematology/oncology fellowship in the future. He asked “Why did you do a chief year, then? Were you trying to improve your application?” At first, I was somewhat offended, […]

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November 12th, 2019

Can Minor Changes in a Program Affect Resident Burnout?

Daniel Orlovich, MD, PharmD

“How did you like it there?” I ask, sitting down next to a new fellow (between bites of a plump sandwich, hoping there is no spinach in my teeth).  I expect to hear the standard resident talking points — long hours, frequent call, and ballooning student loans. Instead, she surprises me.  “Do you know how much they […]

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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 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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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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December 26th, 2018

Trapped – Chronic Pain and Opioids

Ashley McMullen, MD

“I feel like a caged animal” — My patient offered me this lens through which to view his life seeped in chronic pain. For him, pain dictated his entire sense of being — it was something that simply could not be distilled down to a single value on a 10-point scale. The cage represented the […]

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December 20th, 2018

Medicine Robbed Me of My 20s

Scott Hippe, MD

“Medicine robbed me of my 20s.” I’ve heard the line many times in my medical training. It often comes accompanied by a long sigh, a slow sip of coffee, and a glazed stare off into the distance. “Imagine what could’ve been,” the seasoned physician muses, “if I had my 20s to do over, without medicine.” But now, […]

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