Bigredmed

Okay, it's been a crazy, crazy week.

Last saturday, flew to LA. I took Step 2 Clinical Skills on Monday, but one of my good friends lives out in LA so I made a weekend of it. CS was a joke, and a waste of time and money. Unless I completely blew it, there's no way I failed. It was one of those things that was so simple and straight forward that I gradually became more worried that there was some big component of the test that I was missing (med school makes you paranoid that you're an idiot if something is too easy).

CS was monday from 3pm to 11pm, and yes went almost the whole time. Tuesday, I flew out of LA at 703am LA time, and didn't get back home until almost 4pm Central time, which was just enough time to change clothes and go to the student run clinic. After several hours there, I drove the 3 hours to my parent's house. Wednesday was a travel day and I got ready for Interview #2. I had interview #1 at my home program the week before, but I won't be posting any info on that one.

BDM - these will follow the order of my note on Facebook if you're interested in seeing who lines up with who.

Program A: home program, no data in order to protect my identity.

Program B:
I really liked this program, but I'm not really high on the city it is located in. And there were just enough things that the residents said to make me a touch uneasy (dropping it from a 9.0 to a 8.5 because of the uncertainty of what was meant by some of the comments), but overall, I left very impressed. The residents all seemed very happy, they seriously could not stop talking about their program and they were always asking if I had any more questions. That's the first lesson about residency interviews - at least in Peds - they spend almost as much time selling you on their program as you do selling yourself to them. Unlike med school where having three really good questions is enough, I seriously need like 30. It makes it hard though because the other applicants have similar questions so only one of you can ask about things like call schedules and who caters noon conferences. Anyways, this program had a huge number of positive things - benign call schedule, lots of elective time (though mostly in the third year), gorgeous hospital (the PICU was amazing), lots of research, friendly residents - but I might need a second visit to check out the town and see if it's a place I could be happy.

Dinner the night before was at a great restaurant (i had pork osso bucco), lots of residents showed up, there were 6 applicants plus two of the fiancee's of two of the applicants. I really liked the other people who interviewed with me too, which doesn't count for much, but if they're having similar applicants all interview season, I'd be pleased with my resident class if I ended up there. I think there were like 7-8 residents there. It's a free meal for sure, and early in the interview season, but still, impressive to have that many there.

Interview day was an early morning (for me at least as I haven't been on a real service in 3 months). Met with the department chair, heard about the overall direction of the Children's hospital, I interviewed with a Peds ER attending, then the Program director, got a tour, another lunch out - this time with about 5 residents (different then the night before), then an interview with the Chief resident. I felt pretty comfortable with everyone, and loved having so many residents to talk to (even though I heard about most things 6 or 7 times). It really stood out that they were HAPPY.

Some concerns did exist as far as is this a place where they simply expect you to learn by carrying high patient loads (several of the residents described it as a "work" based program, but the administration didn't, even when I pressed them) vs a place where there's a significant blending of didactic lectures, case reports, teaching at the bedside, informal attending lectures, and residents teaching each other. Also a little concerned about recent boards pass rates, but that seems fairly variable from year to year in most programs.

That said, it was a cool place with some unique options. We'll have to see how further interviews pan out, but this program would probably be the top choice at the moment between Program A, Program C and Program E (where I did my away rotation in August), as the current 4 programs I've seen up close...but we still got a long ways to go before that becomes at all meaningful.

Tomorrow I'll get to Program C.