The WELCOME to your new program???

[Saddleshoes]

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How were you welcomed into your new residency?
Good?
Bad?
Indifferent?

 

[eyeeye_captain]

This is going to be all over the board since even within a single field, programs are tremendously different.

My TY prior to ophtho integrated intern years, indifferent at best. The services knew I was cheap labor they wouldn’t have to deal with after a year, so they didn’t put much effort into me. Handed me the schedules the categorical residents didn’t want and said good luck.

Residency, good/indifferent mix. Residents were almost all good. Faculty was a mix, but I got lucky and most of the hard***es liked me. It wasn’t a give you a hug type of residency, but everyone was invested.

I’d be more worried about the going out than the coming in. How good are the attendings at helping you learn? Will they go to bat for you if you want to do a fellowship or need a job reference?

 

[gutonc]

How were you welcomed into your new residency?
Good?
Bad?
Indifferent?

In what respect?
Like, did I get a fruit basket the week after Match Day welcoming me? No.
Did I get more or less sufficient information during orientation so that I knew where to go on my first day? Yes.
Did I have to waste a lot of BS time with in-person and online "safety and security" training. 1000 times yes.
Did somebody teach me how to use my pager and all the various systems we had to use at the time? Mostly.

That was for residency. For fellowship I was welcomed with a STAT page to the ER for a new acute leukemic at 7:30 while I was in conference. That was the entirety of my onboarding (admittedly at the same institution as residency).

 

[LucidSplash]

Will widely vary. For residency there were a few of organized GME-wide social events for new residents, interspersed with the usual orientation stuff, and a few also included existing residents and spouses (for example a river boat cruise with food and booze - cheesy but an enjoyable evening). Also one department specific casual event with existing residents.

For fellowship I was asked to join rounds on June 30th (a Saturday) to learn the list prior to starting July 1st and was pimped and yelled at and disparaged the entire morning.

 

[ThoracicGuy]

For fellowship I was asked to join rounds on June 30th (a Saturday) to learn the list prior to starting July 1st and was pimped and yelled at and disparaged the entire morning.

That sounds awful.

 

[LucidSplash]

That sounds awful.

It was an accurate introduction to the next 2 years.

But hey, I’m a vascular surgeon like I wanted. I win. 😂 Also not much phases me now but also I take no **** and do not allow anyone to mistreat trainees in my presence or my general vicinity.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

In what respect?
Like, did I get a fruit basket the week after Match Day welcoming me? No.
Did I get more or less sufficient information during orientation so that I knew where to go on my first day? Yes.
Did I have to waste a lot of BS time with in-person and online "safety and security" training. 1000 times yes.
Did somebody teach me how to use my pager and all the various systems we had to use at the time? Mostly.

That was for residency. For fellowship I was welcomed with a STAT page to the ER for a new acute leukemic at 7:30 while I was in conference. That was the entirety of my onboarding (admittedly at the same institution as residency).

Yeah, it was interesting.

Residency (mid-tier academic IM program): solid orientation, meet and greets with your co-residents (dept chair held one at his house). I was eased in - I started on geriatrics for crying out loud, so for the first month I had this misleading sense that IM residency may not be as intense as I’d thought.

Fellowship (bougie, name brand fancy rheumatology program): hoo boy. They also “eased you in” but virtually all my co-fellows noted a sense of being “on the firing line” from the first day we were there. They were indeed hard asses, but they went out of their way to pretend as if they weren’t…was this “iron fist in a velvet glove” **** that really started to bother me as fellowship wore on. If you want to be harsh on the trainees, pimp the hell out of everyone, etc - just come right out and do it, I can handle it. But don’t try to act like we’re all this “big happy family” (I heard the dept chair use this exact language over and over again) when we’re really a group of backstabbing, overcompetitive, overpressured freaks who wouldn’t hesitate to kneecap the person next to us if it meant we might get *slightly* ahead.

Needless to say, I am not in academia anymore and I have not looked back.

 

[akwho]

Residency - large blue collar ortho program. The county hospital had mandatory stupid in person training modules a few days after my medical school graduation so had to rush from medical school to residency way early and any hope of a few weeks off between med school and residency quickly evaporated. The smarmy doc doing my employment physical tried to get me interested in paying 3k/mo to live in a shack he owned near the beach an hour from the hospital. Then I started on the busiest service in the entire program at 0300 on day #1. Felt like I was swimming with the sharks from day #1. Ended up loving residency, getting a great surgical experience and a good fellowship.

Fellowship - Low key. Only fellow in an in popular/very useful field. They treated me like a junior attending from day #1. No fuzzy warm greeting or anything but wasn't really needed. After a few weeks of seeing me operate they let me fly pretty independently except for complex revisions. Loved fellowship and had a great experience

 

[Top Gun]

IM residency:

My IM program director had a meeting during which he first asked each of us what our favourite Bollywood movie was. Then he went into this speech about how we were there to work and be of service. And also that if we slowed down our second year residents, they would be hostile toward us. And the chief of the department talked to us for half an hour, and most of his speech was about the stamps we had to have in order to sign our notes (this was back when we still had paper charts). And the stamps had to be blue or black ink. The chief residents gave us a bit more of a welcome, telling us about how intern year would bring out the best in us. Oh yeah, and there was the standard orientation stuff, including the physical, urine drug screen, BLS/ACLS, lectures on professionalism, infection control, etc…That program closed midway through my intern year due to financial reasons, and we all ended up transferring to other programs.

Fellowship was Epic training, cultural competency, standard orientation stuff.