Chief Resident

[sistermike]

Excuse my lack of knowledge upon this subject, but I don't fully understand cheif residents.
What advantages/disadvantages do you have as a chief resident, who decides who becomes chief resident and what qualifications does one usually need to have to be chosen?

thanks

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[mikecwru]

Originally posted by sistermike
Excuse my lack of knowledge upon this subject, but I don't fully understand cheif residents.
What advantages/disadvantages do you have as a chief resident, who decides who becomes chief resident and what qualifications does one usually need to have to be chosen?

thanks

It depends on the specialty. In a lot of general surgery programs, all last year residents are considered "chief residents," in peds and IM programs, you are elected to stay on an extra year to serve as chief resident. In emergency medicine, you usually don't stay another year, but a few seniors are elected to serve their last year as chief resident.

Again, it depends on the specialty and place, but one of the chief resident's main jobs is administrative---they make schedules, have more responsibility in conferences, etc. They are paid (again depends) slightly more than a resident.

It's an advantage because it's considered an honor and looks good when applying for jobs and fellowships.

mike

 

[michigangirl]

My understanding is that the chief resident(s) are usually chosen in the second or third year of residency (for a three year residency) by the program director and a group of faculty. The chiefs are usually chosen based on their performance thus far in the residency, leadership and teaching skills, etc. They usually make a list of the people they want to ask in a given year (kind of like a rank order list) and then keep going until they have the number of people they need agree (usually 1 or 2).

The sacrifice is that you spend one that you could be doing a fellowship or enter practice, etc. The advantages are obviously the experience you get from being a role model and mentoring the residents (particularly the interns), honing your teaching skills, learning a lot about the administrative aspects of academic medicine, and of course it is wonderful to have this on your resume.

I know some programs even choose their chiefs while they are still interns. One program does this and requires that they do something else for a year post residency before they come back to be chief for a year , i.e. first year of fellowship, attend on the wards, etc. The process varies everywhere.

Hope this helps.