I've received some really great advice from colleagues, residents, faculty, and online sources over the last year about the U.S. residency application process and the couples match. I attempt to compile the most helpful tips here and add my own insight (as a Canadian IMG from Saba entering my first choice family medicine residency) as a means to "pay it forward." Choose electives wisely: You can really focus on networking and finding a residency during fourth year. My strategy was to do rotations at hospitals that had a family medicine residency program even if my rotation wasn’t in that specialty. While I was there, I would ask for a meeting with the program director or try to get in on some of the family medicine lectures. I ended up interviewing at 3 places I rotated at plus I received interviews in all 6 states that I did rotations in. For example, I did 6 months of rotations in Louisiana and then received 4 interviews in that state. I was told by a pr...
An Honest Narration of My Surgery Rotation Dressed head to toe in sterile protective equipment, surrounded by blue drapes and beeping machines, I watch a surgical resident cut into bare flesh with a scalpel. It feels counter intuitive. The patient must be harmed in order to be healed. I wish I could take a picture of what I see now every day. I guess Google images will have to do. My life feels like an episode of greys anatomy (Season 1) without all the sex and drama in the stairwells. I am running after my residents like a little duckling and getting chastised for either taking too long to interview a patient or not gathering enough of the history (depending on who I am with that day). I am a minion. Two weeks of gyn surgery. I did endometrial biopsies and sutured skin incisions closed and even did a little work with the tools during a laparoscopic hysterectomy. I watched a uterus filled with cancerous tissue get removed from a woman's body. I assisted o...
I just returned from an amazing 2-week trip around Europe. The trip itself was everything I wanted out of it and more. It was a too-quick whirlwind of a tour but I saw just about everything I wanted to see and ate everything I wanted to eat. I ate croissants in Paris and schnitzel in Germany. I rode a gondola in Italy and went paragliding in Austria. And so much more. But what could have been a great trip with amazing sights was made phenomenal by the people on my tour group. We came from very diverse walks of life – different countries and different careers. We had a doctor (a real one, not me), a cop, a nurse, a carpenter, a social worker, a teacher, an accountant... you get the idea. It amazes me how you can meet someone who lives on a different continent than you and just hit it off right away. I felt that the most with Tiffany from South Africa. We roomed together every night and cried together when we had to leave. I have already planted the seed for her to v...
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