Residency program deal breakers

[nancysinatra]

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I'm just curious--if you could go back and do it all over, what things that you had to put up with in residency would you regard as deal-breakers now, if you were making a rank list for the match?

Here's what's at the top of my list:
- having to park at multiple sites within the same day, every day, and none of it paid for

Others??

 

[twright]

I'm just curious--if you could go back and do it all over, what things that you had to put up with in residency would you regard as deal-breakers now, if you were making a rank list for the match?

Here's what's at the top of my list:
- having to park at multiple sites within the same day, every day, and none of it paid for

Others??

My program had multiple sites within a 15-20 minute drive of each other, and parking was not paid for, but to my memory none of the residents complained much about this. We generally viewed the multi-site learning as a plus. When we started driving around to psychiatrists' offices in the community for specialty 1-on-1 supervision (e.g., one of my colleagues was learning about dream interpretation) certainly none of that was paid for and many were feeding quarters into the parking meters.

If the commute were more substantive (e.g., living in Boston and having to drive to McLean every day) then I can see how it would get more annoying. Certainly that is a common complaint among the MGH/McLean residents I have known.

One commute-related situation that I would probably regard as a dealbreaker is having to cover multiple hospitals on call. There are programs where this is required of residents, and while parking is generally free overnight I certainly would not want to be driving around to multiple sites on call.

 

[PistolPete]

If there is no EMR, or no plans for one in the very near future, like 1-2 years at MOST, then run.

 

[nancysinatra]

If there is no EMR, or no plans for one in the very near future, like 1-2 years at MOST, then run.

Wow that's interesting, because I prefer the opposite--100% paper record systems. It's nice to be able to type out my note, but otherwise EMRs are just ways for hospitals to employ more administrators. After all they need people to:

Come up with new and more time consuming ways to "require authorization" on EPIC

Come up with ever more bureaucratic rules about who can write which kind of notes

Devise new ways to incorrectly schedule patients for things

Create new places to hide the most common orders

Just generally, invent new buttons, codes, and "layers" of approval

 

[annie501]

Wow that's interesting, because I prefer the opposite--100% paper record systems. It's nice to be able to type out my note, but otherwise EMRs are just ways for hospitals to employ more administrators. After all they need people to:

Come up with new and more time consuming ways to "require authorization" on EPIC

Come up with ever more bureaucratic rules about who can write which kind of notes

Devise new ways to incorrectly schedule patients for things

Create new places to hide the most common orders

Just generally, invent new buttons, codes, and "layers" of approval

LOL....I was once told by an EPIC admin that I had not actually seen the patient who had just left my office.


Dealbreakers for me: 1) no support staff. You don't want to be getting up at 5am to do your own blood draws and EKG's or up all night trying to get a patient transferred out to a different hospital.
2) Residents doing any crucial part of training on their own time outside the residency program (most likely psychotherapy, but also research).
3) Unaffordable cost of living vs. salary.

 

[hamstergang]

Wow that's interesting, because I prefer the opposite--100% paper record systems. It's nice to be able to type out my note, but otherwise EMRs are just ways for hospitals to employ more administrators.

Haha, I asked about EMR on all my interviews, and while it wasn't much of a factor to me, I did prefer those that had newer systems. EMR is so superior to paper charts for being able to find and read notes so you can actually know what's going on with your patients.

 

[Igor4sugry]

EMR
good moonlighting (in-house)
good benefits

 

[splik]

for me deal breakers were/are:
less than 3-4 weeks vacation
inability to take 1 week or more off at a time
not having as much paid educational/professional need as you need (e.g. for presenting at conferences, sitting on committees)
not having protected time for psychotherapy patients
not having elective time before PGY-4
having less than 12months FTE elective time
not being allowed to do international electives
PGY salary <50 000/year regardless of location (for psychological reasons, i already took a significant pay cut couldn't cope with less than that)

 

[siked]

Dealbreakers for me: 1) no support staff. You don't want to be getting up at 5am to do your own blood draws and EKG's or up all night trying to get a patient transferred out to a different hospital.

Is this seriously ever the case for a residency program??!! Holy crap that would be the worst...

 

[shan564]

Is this seriously ever the case for a residency program??!! Holy crap that would be the worst...

Yeah, at the IMG factories in New York and the like.

EDIT: This was post # 1337 for me. My inner computer geek feels the need to point that out...

 

[billypilgrim37]

So you now have to post exclusively in ascii characters?

 

[shan564]

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