CHOOSING A RESIDENCY PROGRAM

As the rank order list deadline looms ahead, I thought this would be a great time to broach this important topic! Making your rank list of residency programs can seem pretty daunting. I remember worrying that I would make the wrong decision and the Match would place me somewhere where I would be miserable for my entire residency. Or worse, I wouldn't match at all and would have to scramble...

For those who don't know, the Match works by taking every applicant's list of programs and cross-referencing it to every program's list of applicants in some computer algorithm somewhere. So, say you list a particular program as number one, if that program ranks a lot of other applicants above you who also ranked the program highly on their list, you could end up not matching with said program. Basically, you can never be too sure -- which totally freaked me out when I was preparing to send my list in.

At the end of the day though, when it came time to submit my list, it was a whole lot of gut feeling more than anything else. But here are the factors that I looked for during interviews that helped me in making my rank list:

1. Work exposure: To graduate any residency, there are minimum numbers of procedures and surgeries that you have to reach. It's important to consider if resident's at a particular program have an easy or hard time reaching to numbers.  Also, if you're going into a field like family medicine, it's also important to remember that some family programs are heavier on the OB exposure than others. Same is true for most fields--for example, I really wanted a program where the GYN surgeons did a lot of robotic surgery so that was something I looked at. I will say though, that by the time I got to my last few interviews I had stopped looking so closely at this because it turned out that most programs had no real trouble getting their residents to reach their minimum numbers required for graduation.

2. Social life: This has a lot to do with the city the residency is in, but basically, what social activities are you hoping to continue in residency? Fitness is really important to me and my program has a 3 story gym on campus that we get a steep discount on. The gym is right next to my parking garage making it super easy to workout right after a shift. Charleston was perfect for me because it's a place with year-round local events, plenty of nightlife and more restaurants than I can count. And living 10 minutes from the beach is a nice plus ;)

3. Location: Is it important to you to be within driving distance from your family? Or would you rather be farther away? Are you in a long-distance relationship and that's a factor? Do you absolutely hate winters and need to avoid a place that has long ones? All of these can be important in making your final decision. I've lived all over so weather and distance from family weren't super important in my decision.

4. Call schedule: What is the program's call schedule like on weeknights and weekends? This is important to know just to see how much of a social life you would actually have. It's hard to see your friends and family if you're pulling 24h calls every few days. Specifically on weeknights, I made sure to ask when the checkout was--anything past 6PM was too late for me because it doesn't really allow you time to get home, eat dinner, shower and do anything else before it's already time for bed.

5. Vacation/Leave: The majority of residency programs give you 3 weeks off per year {to be taken 1 week at a time} though there are a few that give you 4 weeks. In terms of leave, if you're planning on having kids during residency, find out what the maternity leave is like. Obviously, no one plans to get sick or have surgery but it's also important to know the sick leave policy. I myself ended up having to get ACL surgery during my intern year and it was a super smooth process thanks to my program's flexibility with scheduling our rotations.

6. Faculty: This is super important simply because the faculty are going to be your teachers and your mentors. You don't necessarily need to be BFFs with them (though that's great when it happens!) but you should feel like you could build a rapport with them and work with them closely every day. It's hard to tell during a short interview what your interviewer is like so definitely go to the luncheons and dinners that are part of the interview day(s) to chat with the faculty that come.

7. Residents: This was the most crucial aspect of how I ranked each program I interviewed with. It was critical to know that the place I matched with had residents who a) liked each other, b) actually hung out outside of work and c) seemed genuinely happy. Obviously you only get one day with each program when you interview so the residents could pretend for a day but you can really tell when people actually know and like each other. Residents who don't like each other, don't know each other and/or are cut-throat and competitive with each other was just not for me and I knew that going in. Again, the social events embedded in your interview day are an great way to suss this out. I also asked people who knew residents in the programs if they weren't programs I had friends in or ties to. One thing I didn't think about is the fact that the residents in your class are not going to be the ones you see all the time {in my program, most of the rotating teams include one resident from each class} so I looked very closely at the residents who would be my upper levels since I would be spending countless hours with them.

Our annual residency river float!

Lastly, if there is a program that you absolutely did not like or that you felt had some fatal flaw, you are allowed to not rank them at all. Of course, you have to ask yourself if you would rather not match at all {and have to scramble} than go to that program--because that would be the worst case scenario.

Hopefully, this is helpful to you all during the last little bit of rank season. While it's super stressful now, it'll all be worth it next month! Feel free to ask me any questions :)