God no. But if you look at a collection of no shows for residency interviews, the vast majority are going to be issue of unprofessionalism, not Acts of God. There are many reasons for cancellation of interviews but very, very few for actual no shows.
True. But you're about to experience Real World Real Issues as a resident and doctor too. In any given residency, we get those. But low and behold, residents manage to call in when something terrible happens. It's a uncomfortable but people expect it. Because we all sympathize with Acts of God, but still patients come into the ER and still patients need care overnight and someone needs to see them all. And your fellow residents and program will move mountains and earth to accommodate, but you need to make a call.
Actually, yes. In that situation, I would email the PC as soon as there was downtime in the ER visit. People can understand emergencies if you give them the chance to. I don't see why that would be too much to ask.
Stop the strawmanning. I never said to make it top priority. But you have a professional responsibility that you will be unable to make, so spending the 2 minutes to deal with it is certainly a reasonable expectation.
The issue prompting this thread is not about last minute urgent/emergent cancellations due to illness or weather, etc--when that's the case we'll always find some way to reschedule, or at least do a phone interview if you really and truly are interested. (I did a phone interview last year for an applicant who had to go on bedrest, for example.) It's about applicants "hoarding" interviews that they set up back in October at programs at which they have no intention of interviewing--but failed to have the common courtesy to call and withdraw their application from.
