As physicians move throughout their training, they acquire different titles in addition to their MD. … Read more
It’s your biggest dream and quite possibly your biggest fear at the same time. Your … Read more
Dear medical students: I’m sorry.
You had just finished two years of didactic learning and couldn’t wait to feel like a “real” doctor. You finally were starting your clerkships, that is, finally working with patients and getting deep in the trenches.
I knew residency was going to be hard. I had anticipated the long hours, weeks in a row without a two-day weekend (which, in an attempt to see the glass as half full, I have come to call vacations), and the mountain of new knowledge I would need to master. None of this came as a surprise and I was braced for them from the day I showed up for orientation. However, I’ve found that residency comes with a whole set of challenges I did not expect. If anyone had told me about them in med school, I guess I wasn’t really listening (or, more likely, was too preoccupied trying to figure out my patient’s acid/base situation by the time we rounded to take much notice). For each of us, these unexpected challenges in residency are likely to be a little different, stemming from our own strengths, weaknesses and pet peeves. Here are some of the difficulties I wasn’t expecting: