About a year and a half ago, I remember waking up at 2 AM every morning to catch an early cab ride, so I could arrive at 3 AM and finish charting all my assigned ward patients before my residents even saw the light of day. The goal of pre-residency was to impress, to show off, to demonstrate that I was better than the rest of them—and therefore I could survive residency. It was extremely competitive. Those were never my goals, however. I felt, at the time, that I just needed to be myself: if they didn’t like me enough, then it was probably for my own good that I shouldn’t get into the prestigious UP-PGH Internal Medicine training program.
But by God’s grace, I did. And I’m blessed, grateful, and perhaps just a little bit bogged down—in a good kind of way.
I saw them again this morning, already sweaty from the humidity of our overcrowded ER. I hope they emerge out of this phase of their lives more in love with Internal Medicine, and all the thinking and analyzing and charting it entails. Let the pre-residency begin. People don’t call it the Hunger Games for nothing.
Also read: On-preresidency.
- New doctors, usually recent medical graduates, applying for the 21 slots for residency in our training program. ↩︎
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