How I Chose My Residency

Happy Monday, and welcome to Medical Mondays! I wrote a joke post about how I was choosing my residency a couple months back, and since I revealed where I’m going for residency last week, here’s the breakdown of how I chose my residency (aka the criteria I used to find residency programs to apply to)!

It’s funny how you can have a whole set list of everything you think you want, but then what you actually end up falling in love with is completely different (but still has all the things that you care about most!). Come to think of it, this probably applies to people as well.

Unopposed

I originally thought I wanted a program where Family Medicine would be the only residency there, but…I made a couple exceptions, and I’m glad I did, or I wouldn’t have applied to this one!

Community-based

Community-based programs are generally more geared toward providing clinical service, which I definitely prefer over research and academia. RWJ was the only university-based program I applied to, and go figure–it ended up being my favorite!

Emphasis on providing care to under-served populations

This was a given–the reason why I went to medical school to begin with was so that I could improve health care for under-served populations!

Community outreach opportunities

Goes hand in hand with under-served care–I love volunteering and giving back, so I wanted to find a place with tons of opportunities in that!

Friendly, supportive learning environment with a family-like atmosphere

I’m a big believer in the “treat others how you’d want to be treated” philosophy, and I wanted a smaller program. This program only accepts 5 residents per class, so I super lucked out (especially if you see the statistics at the bottom…).

Flexibility to explore my interests within family medicine:

One of the billions of reasons as to why I love Family Medicine = there are so many different venues to explore! My favorites outside of preventative health and working with under-served populations included:

• Community Medicine
• Sports Medicine
• Geriatrics
• Integrative Medicine
• Global Health/International Medicine

I wanted to find a program that would let their residents tailor their education to what they wanted to incorporate into their practice in the future. RWJ has fellowship tracks in all of these and then some. :]

Location

I was lucky in the sense that I could essentially go anywhere. Since I have no spouse to consider job options for or kids to drag around the country with me, I went by how much I liked the program more so than location (although it still had to be a state I wouldn’t mind living in)!

The Match

Back in September, I received an email from the program I’m going to be going to (read all about Match Day 2016!) telling me that they’d already received over 900 applications and only planned to interview ~50 people. She said the core faculty was impressed with my application, but were wondering about my sincerity in applying, given my almost complete lack of ties to New Jersey.

The night before my interview was a little chaotic–my two flights were delayed (things that happen when you schedule 4 interviews in 3 states over 3 days) and I couldn’t tell the hotel I’d be late because I was too busy chasing down the next plane. When I finally got there at 11:30 p.m., I found out they’d given my room away, and were fully booked for the night.

They eventually found me a room in a neighboring town and I got settled in there by 2:30 a.m. I’d meant to make it to the (optional) morning rounds, but got hopelessly lost in the hospital (if only I’d known that the hospital has its own app in case you get lost?! I kid you not!) In any case, I ended up almost sitting in on General Surgery interviews (…), but thankfully, it all turned out okay!

My interviewers were absolutely amazing, and really sold the program for me–the former program director had clearly looked extensively through my file and spent her interview time with me telling me about all the opportunities I’d have to pursue every part of FM that I’d stated I was interested in. (I can’t wait to work with her!! So excited! <3) Quotes #2, 3, 6, 8 and 10 were from this program!

Out of 950+ applicants, they gave a closer look to ~200 applications, and out of those, they chose 50 people to interview for 5 spots.

To say that I feel incredibly lucky would be the understatement of the century. <3

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• Would you be weirded out about having your own face staring down at you every day?
• Tell me about a time that you beat the odds, or went for something even though you never thought you’d get it! (I wasn’t sure if this program would give me the time of day, but I didn’t want to regret anything, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try applying–I’m so glad I did!)

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