Congratulations to all of my clients who will be starting medical school soon. This is a tremendous achievement. For those who hope to matriculate in the next year or two, I might recommend this Varsity Tutors piece that I wrote several years ago and the follow-up article. The “medical school paradox” is a tough one to crack, but if you prepare in advance, you’ll have an excellent head start and a professional advantage.
I participated in a great Harvard Medical School webinar on implicit bias in medicine with cardiologist Dr. Quinn Capers IV, who is a dean at UT Southwestern Medical School. Dr. Capers has published work documenting racial and gender bias in medical school admissions, among other realms. He has also published recommendations on how clinicians and medical educators can mitigate implicit bias in patient care and candidate selection.
In the webinar, Dr. Capers covered strategies to reduce or neutralize implicit bias, including
1. Common identify formation – Ask interviewee questions about interests and activities that you share in common.
2. Perspective taking – Take the perspective of a member of the group against which you have unconscious bias.
3. Consider the opposite – When data seem to point to one conclusion, briefly look for information supporting the opposite conclusion before making a final decision.
4. Counter stereotypical exemplars – Spend time with or focus on individuals you admire from groups against which you have a bias.
Dr. Capers described providing an implicit bias “cheat sheet” that included these strategies to medical school interviewers at The Ohio State College of Medicine, where he previously worked. If you have a chance to hear a lecture by Dr. Capers, make sure to grab the opportunity.
I’ve been editing a lot of ERASes lately. Let’s briefly cover five quirks of the ERAS platform to help you get through the drafting process. The ERAS platform…
For tips on how to craft your ERAS, check out this short blog entry.
Contact me for help with this weird and wild process.
Imagine that you’re a program director (PD) going through scores of ERASes and interviews. What questions would you ask yourself as you assessed each residency candidate to avoid big headaches?
1) Can this person do the job? Is s/he competent?
2) Will this person “play well with others” and not create complaints from patients, faculty, or other services.
3) Will this person stick with the program and not leave prematurely? A PD does not want to scurry around to fill an open call schedule/ residency slot.
As you approach your interviews, consider how you can demonstrate your competence and collegiality, as well as your commitment to the field and the residency program. For the former, ensure you showcase academic successes, extra curricular activities that demonstrate teamwork, and – if asked – hobbies and reading materials that demonstrate your personality. For the latter, highlight research projects in the specialty, sub-internships, and knowledge about the program and city.
Making sure the PD knows you are not going to cause him/her trouble is at least half the battle.
Here’s an interesting piece called “Are There Too Many Emergency Physicians?” by Thomas Cook MD, an emergency medicine program director. Dr. Cook chronicles the growth of emergency medicine residency positions from a total of 1821 in 2015 to 2488 in 2019. This rapid growth in the field may lead to an oversupply of emergency physicians.
The paradox here is that only recently there was a shortage of emergency physicians. And back when I graduated from medical school in the mid-1990s, almost no one was applying for emergency medicine. In my class of around 150 students, there were three of us. As the popularity of the show “ER” waxed, the number of applicants to the field swelled. Then, years later, the field contracted again.
Other fields have also recently seen a boom in the number of residency spots, including family medicine, psychiatry, and anesthesiology. Of course, opening up more residency positions is a good thing for medical students (especially international medical graduates) and patients, but the growth in certain fields may lead to a change in the economy of those specialties. It will be an interesting experiment.
Dr. Finkel is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. On completing her residency at Harvard, she was asked to stay on as faculty at Harvard Medical School and spent five years teaching at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital. She was appointed to the Assistant Residency Director position for the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency where she reviewed countless applications, personal statements and resumes. Read more
