I woke up to the sound of a faint “ding” from my bedside table. It was 5:24 a.m. Shaking off my lethargy, I scrambled over to my phone because the ding meant one thing: my first residency interview invitation. Looking back on that moment, as I responded in the dim light of the morning, I […]
This one’s for the new interns. You’re excited, you’re about to start residency. You’re a doctor. No more short white coat. You’ve got the long white coat that you’ve been waiting for. You’ve arrived. But actually, there’s one more thing you need before you really feel like you look like a doctor. It might be […]
This summer, new resident physicians begin their training all across the United States. Today, our future family physicians and pediatricians, neurosurgeons and emergency physicians, plastic surgeons and laser tattoo removal specialists (OK, not really a specialty, just a sideline) will begin learning how to be physicians, having completed four years of expensive college and four […]
The season has opened, and panic has spread among senior year residents, chief residents, and hospitalists out in the community. Fellowship applications are live and being viewed by the programs applicants think they want to rank one, two, and three. These incredibly intelligent physicians are refreshing student document network daily now and soon to be […]
Even though my own internship was a decade ago, I vividly remember the transition from student to resident. Residency was monumental in my path to becoming a physician. There were obvious changes: People now called me “doctor,” my misshapen short white coat was upgraded to a more comforting full length one, and I was often […]
Literature coming from business and human resource management suggests that women are over-mentored and unders-ponsored. However, if you have been reading reports about women in medicine, then you likely have heard that women are both over-mentored and under-mentored. Where does the truth lie? That depends on various factors including the definitions of these terms. What […]
I sometimes get messages from people who have lost physician colleagues and loved ones to suicide. It’s the specifics of these stories that wound me: a note left for an unexpected person; an insignificant fight at sign-out that in retrospect is full of meaning; the white coat that a woman wore when she jumped to […]
Young, aspiring doctors are the Iron Youth of this generation. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, young German soldiers are called the Iron Youth as part of a campaign to generate enthusiasm for fighting in the war; these soldiers soon realize the true horrors of war and its lasting impact on […]
There are 168 hours in a week and 8,736 hours in a year. There are 10,080 minutes in a week, and 524,160 minutes in a year. Residents and fellows working in an academic environment often work close to, if not in large part, more than 80 hours a week, or 4,160 hours a year. They […]
Summer is upon us, and with it comes the end of the academic year, graduations and the arrival of the newest crop of interns. Soon these fresh-faced physicians will enter into one of the most remarkable educational experiences of their medical careers: residency. Many of these soon-to-be-interns are looking to attendings now for advice on […]
