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Msucom reads your letters to you or at least they used to. Her letter made me sound like the world's best resident on planet earth. This has gotten so off topic and way more personal than intended. My CV has a lot of red flags my low board scores on the Comlex my fault. I'm not going to get into thr rest. Thanks so much for the helpful and thoughtful advice. Congratulations to all who have passed the boards and best of luck to those who are taking it this year.
You are getting a lot of criticism because your reasons for worrying about the boards and getting a letter from a retired PD appears counter-productive to your goals. You appear to be sabotaging your ideal career trajectory. Before you become defensive, hear me out.
90% of LOR’s are a waste of paper. They almost all state that the candidate is absolutely amazing. 5% are actually not recommendations but criticisms. PD’s mostly skim for the 5% that help people stand out. Your retired PD already made comments about you in your file that the current PD will send out. Unless your ex-PD is currently working clinically with you, their random new opinion is now worthless. Their comments on your semi-annual reviews are more accurate than her recollection of the more distant past.
Dedicating your time to passing an exam that has 0 impact on your future in FM is hurting you.
If I am a FM PD, I get thousands of applications each year. The non-traditional applicants need to wow me more than typical applicants, and I would go into each application believing that non-traditional applicants are more likely to quit. After all, they have a great fall-back plan. Dedicating time to board certification shows me that you are exceptionally well prepared to quit FM residency when it gets hard.
Your job is to convince them that FM training with more difficult financing will lead to a better future for them (dedicated resident) and the public. Any hint that you are doing FM in part because psych sucks is a deal-breaker for you. You spent 4 years continuing psych despite not liking it and you learned from that experience. If you quickly determine that FM also sucks, you will probably happily quit. Even if it isn’t true for you, that’s a huge risk for them.
While you need to develop your own narrative, consider what your competition is selling. A colleague of mine did psych and determined that he liked rural, harder climates. He semi-enjoyed psych, but he had difficulty becoming “the guy” for the community. The men believed mental illness was a weakness, and they had “more pressing” physical issues. My colleague decided to do a FM residency, not because he hated psych but because he believed it would open doors and build trust to enhance the physical and mental well-being of a community that had 0 doctors. Board certification wasn’t even attempted because he discovered that FM was “mandatory” to provide the foundation for improved mental health of an area with limited knowledge and resources. He also was working on a non-profit. He was more than willing to provide his mental health insight to in-training peers to enhance their program as well.
His application demonstrated that he “needed” FM to further his goals. His goals were more defined than his competition. Regardless of his past, he had a mission that sold himself.
You don’t need to respond to my post at all. Think about it and ask yourself if your strategy is defining your future or just checking perceived boxes that everyone else has.