Kansas City

This weekend is the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) National Conference for Students and Residents. It's a mouthful to say. At this conference there will be many seminars and lectures given by some well-known family physicians around the country. There will also be some informative sessions dealing with "The Road to Residency" - tips on applying and interviewing, etc. The most exciting part for me is that there will be residency programs from all over the United States there. I will be able to speak with residents at residency programs from California, Oregon, etc and learn about their programs. Interacting with the residents will also help give me an idea as to whether or not I could see myself working with them and people like them in the future. This is my trip to narrow down my list of places that I will be applying for residency.

In the upcoming weeks, I am going to try and explain somewhat about the applying to residency process, the match, etc. I hope it's not too boring, but it's a confusing process and this way maybe when I'm home at Thanksgiving or I mention something in an email while talking about what I'm up to that having read some of it first will make it less confusing.

First - as many of you know I am in my 4th and final year of medical school! woohoo!!!!! I have made my decision that I want to be a family physician. The next step in my training process is to apply to a residency in family medicine. This residency will last for 3 years and my training will be specific to family medicine (even though family medicine truly is a little bit of everything). But let's say I wanted to do surgery instead - I would apply to a surgical residency and start my training in surgery next year. That residency lasts 5 years.

A resident is a doctor, but they are still "in training." Residents work under attendings (doctors who have completed residency), so all of the steps a resident takes are overseen by another doctor. But...as a resident I finally will be able to admit people to the hospital, write prescriptions, and actually start to have my own patients. Slowly as a resident you build up your independence and are actually useful. The other big perk of being a resident is that you get paid...finally! Definitely not the type of salary people think of when they hear the word doctor - try about $40,000-45,000 for working up to 80 hours per week, with close to a quarter million dollars in loans with interest to pay off. Ahhh...the life of luxury.

So right now I'm starting the process of looking into where I want to apply to residency. I'm working on my Curriculum Vitae (very similar to a resume), personal statement (which is excrutiatingly painful, because all creativity I once had has been slowly sucked out of me over the last 3 yrs), and filling out the online application. I'm just at the start of the process, but am already feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be accomplished in the next few months.

I'm off tomorrow morning! Wish me luck & I will fill you in once I'm back in Hershey :)