Other activities under residency

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Hello!
I am 1st year resident in EM in Europe.
I have been wondering lately about Clinical work , studies and other activities like research, education. I see that many residents do reaserch, other are instructors for example in trauma courses or pediatric/adult life support, do different educational improvement things in clinic. For me it feels that there is so much to learn. What are your recommendations - do you recommend that a resident learn theory and focus just at a clinical work or that a resident do different projects at the same time? My goal is to be a good clinician at first. maybe they who are for example instructors at trauma course or other courses are better clinicians , communicators also and become better to manage those patients ? What are your thoughts?

 

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Hello!
I am 1st year resident in EM in Europe.
I have been wondering lately about Clinical work , studies and other activities like research, education. I see that many residents do reaserch, other are instructors for example in trauma courses or pediatric/adult life support, do different educational improvement things in clinic. For me it feels that there is so much to learn. What are your recommendations - do you recommend that a resident learn theory and focus just at a clinical work or that a resident do different projects at the same time? My goal is to be a good clinician at first. maybe they who are for example instructors at trauma course or other courses are better clinicians , communicators also and become better to manage those patients ? What are your thoughts?

A lot of residency programs have some of these components built in as a requirement, particularly research and QI. Though there is a lot of variability in how seriously those requirements are taken and what level of work/innovation is expected. There are some folks who go above and beyond the typical requirements, and engage more seriously in research, QI, or other similar scholarly projects outside of the curriculum. Whether and how this works depends on several factors in my opinion:

Where are you in your training? Typically later in residency people may have a lot more time to engage in non-clinical activities. At a PGY-1 level, I doubt anybody has time for meaningful non-clinical, non-learning commitments. And if they do, that time would probably be better spent on friends, family, rest/relaxation, hobbies, etc. Often as you progress through training the amount of clinical obligations drops off, the learning becomes less urgent, and there may even be elective time built into the training pathway that one could use for things like that.

What is your background? Some people entering residency have done quite a bit of research or public health work (may even have degrees in the field), and they continue to take on serious projects throughout residency. Those people typically already have the skillset and a largely continuing/building on their previous work. For example, I know of some MD/PhDs who continued doing bench work during residency, and some MPHs who continued to work in their areas of public health, writing papers, etc.

What are your career goals? If you don't have that background already doesn't mean that you can't build towards it, but you should probably first figure out what you want to do with your career. Then you can take on obligations that help move you towards your long term goal. For example, if you want to become the next best thing in point of care ultrasound, then maybe it does make sense to take on projects related to ultrasound QI, education, research etc in your later residency years. But doing projects that don't line up with your values and career goals is just keeping yourself excessively busy with little long term return.