Whether you’re looking to gain hands-on experience, build connections in the U.S. healthcare system, explore specific specialties, or strengthen your CV, securing the right clinical experience for your goals is easier than ever with AMO.

Here are four ways AMO can support your goals.

1. Access to Unmatched Clinical Opportunities

Whether you’re seeking hands-on experience through a clerkship or an externship, or an observership, AMO’s more than 500 clinical experiences in 70+ specialties helps you find the right experience for your goals all through a single platform.

2. Support Every Step of the Way

AMO provides one-on-one support from our dedicated AMO Advisors and Coaches, who assist with everything from application completion to travel arrangements.

The AMO team’s support comes with your reservation, so you’re getting the assurance that your goals and success are considered along the way.

3. Real-World Training that Prepares You for Your Career

AMO’s clinical rotations are designed so that you can learn first-hand how medical professionals work in diverse specialties, helping you feel more prepared entering residency or your first day on the job.

You’ll have the opportunity to gain letters of recommendation from U.S.-based physicians, an invaluable asset to residency applications.

4. A Platform Built with Your Success in Mind

Book learning can vary so much from reality. What specialties may be exciting in the classroom may not be so exciting in real life. AMO helps you explore multiple specialties, guiding you as you refine your career path.

Whether you’re pursuing a specific field or still exploring, this exposure can provide clarity and direction.

For AMSA members looking to enhance their medical education and gain a competitive edge in the U.S. healthcare system, get started by creating your free account .

The post Premier Clinical Rotation Opportunities for AMSA Members appeared first on AMSA.

Once a year, we come together as a diverse force of future physicians banded together with a common goal: to make positive change in healthcare. To dare to envision a better realm of medicine — to overcome barriers that stand in the way of health equity and accelerate lasting change. Justice. Inclusion. Dare to blaze the path forward with us as we become the architects of a brighter tomorrow, and we invite you to join us on this inspiring journey.

At Future Physicians for Change, we don’t just talk about change; we are the change. As you enter our world, you’ll find yourself on the forefront of a revolution in healthcare. It’s a place where the status quo is challenged, where barriers are shattered, and where dreams of a fairer, more inclusive medical field take flight.

This isn’t just a conference; it’s an opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s a space where daring visionaries gather to craft a future where healthcare knows no bounds.

Join us, and dare to be the spark that blazes the path forward toward a brighter, more equitable world. Dare to dream, dare to act, and dare to be an instrumental part of the change. The journey begins at��Future Physicians for Change.

Conference Details

Date: May 30 – June 1, 2024
Location: Washington, D.C.’s Hyatt Regency Crystal City.

This year, AMSA is proud to co-host the Future Physicians for Change conference with six other prominent medical student organizations, American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA), Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS), Medical Students for Choice (MSFC), Medical Students for Sustainable Future (MS4SF), South Asian Medical Student Association (SAMSA), Association of Native American Medical Students (ANAMS), including International Federation of Medical Students’ Association (IFMSA), and potentially more. By uniting our forces, we aim to create an event that transcends boundaries, fostering collaboration and dialogue among the brightest minds in the medical community.

Key Programs:

1. Residency and Specialty Fair

Engage directly with program directors, inquire about away rotations, application processes, and gain insights into what programs/specialties are looking for. This isn’t your average job fair for aspiring physicians—it’s a dynamic showcase crafted exclusively for future leaders in medicine.

2. Sim Challenge

Teams of 4-5 students will compete in a series of simulated clinical scenarios requiring medical knowledge, clinical skills, teamwork, and communication.

3. Poster Session

Present your research project to a VIP panel of AMSA experts and leaders at Future Physicians for Change. Showcase your work, hone your public speaking skills, network with influencers, and boost your CV. Plus, win prizes if you nail it!

4. Advocacy Day on the Hill

On May 30th, 2024, we will lift our voices as future physicians to the Senate, educating and advocating for the kind of healthcare system we want to work in and the healthcare we want for our patients, families, and communities.

AND WAIT–there’s MORE!

Collaboration with AMOpportunities

We are thrilled to announce an exciting partnership with AMOpportunities (AMO). This year, AMSA and AMO have teamed up to provide exclusive two-week clinical rotations to attendees of the Future Physicians for Change Conference. These rotations, available either before or after the conference, offer a unique clinical experiences in the medical field.

Key Details:

• Rotation Dates: May 13–24 or June 3–14, 2024
• Cost: $1500
• Registration:��

AMO will be offering 30 two-week rotations across the U.S. in over 70 specialties, allowing you to tailor your clinical experience to match your interests. This incredible opportunity is a chance to apply the knowledge gained at the conference in a real-world setting, further enriching your understanding of the medical landscape.

.

Be the Change

Future Physicians for Change is not just a conference; it’s a movement. It’s an opportunity to contribute to the transformation of healthcare, to challenge the norms, and to be an active participant in shaping the future of medicine.

As we converge in Washington, D.C., let us unite under the banner of change. Let us be the architects of a healthcare system that knows no bounds, where inclusivity reigns supreme, and where each voice, including yours, makes a resounding impact.

Dare to dream, dare to act, and dare to be an instrumental part of the change. The journey begins at Future Physicians for Change. We look forward to welcoming you to this unparalleled experience that promises to redefine the future of medicine.

Register for all the above and more at��.

The post Future Physicians for Change: Dare to Blaze the Path Forward appeared first on AMSA.

This September, I will join thousands of medical students applying for OB-GYN residencies in states across the country. For students like me, applying to residency programs is supposed to be an exciting step towards a career in providing quality healthcare to patients in need. After four years of medical school, I am excited to put my skills to use and offer patients quality, comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion care.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision to has dramatically limited our opportunities to learn. As attacks on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy escalate, it becomes ever more challenging to provide the patient care that we staunchly believe our patients need and deserve.

Applications for OB-GYN residency programs nationwide after the Supreme Court struck down Roe, and in states where abortion is banned.

Like aspiring OB-GYNs, family medicine and emergency medicine physicians, I will not be applying to residency programs in states with stringent abortion bans. I need a residency program that will offer me an opportunity to build on what I have learned in medical school, and practice the skills needed to provide quality, evidence-based care—an opportunity that I would not get as a resident in any state that has banned or severely restricted abortion. …

The post I’m an Aspiring OB-GYN. Here Is Why I Won’t Do My Residency in Any State With an Abortion Ban. appeared first on AMSA.

The AMSA (AMSA) would like to thank Dr. R. Ray Jr. for publically detailing his experience with racism during his residency education, as detailed in his blog post, . The reported willful dismissal of racist and discriminatory practices is disgusting and atrocious. We recognize that this is only one example of many that impact Black and Brown medical trainees in medical education. We would like to express our solidarity with Dr. Ray. AMSA calls on the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) to conduct a formal and thorough investigation of these incidents.��

AMSA stands firmly against any form of racism, discrimination, or bias within the medical profession. At AMSA, we recognize that there are other incredible organizations and individuals who are leaders in antiracist work. We are committed to learning from and collaborating with allies in this space. Together, we can catalyze conversations and actions that can dismantle the pathology of racism in medicine.

We urge institutions, including the ACGME, to implement reporting systems that are followed by meaningful action. These reporting systems should guarantee confidentiality, protection against retaliation, and a thorough investigation by a third party. Medical trainees need more robust protections and the ACGME should demand corrective actions when trainees are mistreated.��

Additionally, medical schools and residency programs must provide education and training on cultural humility, unconscious bias, and the importance of fostering a diverse and inclusive learning environment. We must create a safe and inclusive culture for all trainees and not host DEI sessions simply to complete a “checkbox”. Medical institutions must evaluate their practices, policies, and culture to ensure an environment that fosters diversity, inclusion, and equity.

We cannot stand idle as those who are experiencing mistreatment, discrimination, and racism speak up in isolation. All healthcare workers have a responsibility to challenge and confront structural and overt racism. Allyship in these spaces and refusal to be silent in situations of overt and subversive discrimination is indispensable and our moral responsibility.

To medical trainees who have experienced or witnessed racism, discrimination, or bias, we encourage you to share your experiences, as you can safely. If medical leadership teams are committed to creating more diverse and inclusive environments, the sharing of these experiences must be followed by meaningful and public action. We cannot afford to have “silent” allies in the pursuit of dismantling institutional racism. We need bold and effective action.

AMSA stands in solidarity with Dr. Ray and with all individuals who have experienced and continue to experience racism and discrimination in the workplace. We need more doctors like Dr. Ray, who shed light on discriminatory practices and further exemplify the type of leadership that is desperately needed in the field of medicine. Others, specifically those who hold more privilege and power in these spaces, are absolutely crucial to challenge these racist systems. Only when we face institutional racism head-on, can we begin to build the equitable healthcare system that our country needs.

The post AMSA calls on the ACGME to Conduct a Formal Investigation into Racist and Discriminatory Practices in Graduate Medical Education appeared first on AMSA.

In March, the InCUS convened to discuss possible solutions to this. There were a number of recommendations that were made. There were suggestions to reduce the influence of the exam by�� returning to pass/fail, quartile, or other forms of scoring. It was recommended to increase research on the USMLE performance of students and how it relates to clinical practice. Another recommendation was to minimize racial differences in the USMLE performance. The final recommendation was to create a cross-organizational panel to create solutions for the assessment and transition challenges from UME to GME, targeting an approved proposal, including scope/timelines by the end of calendar year 2019.

AMSA believes in the well-being of all of our students, and for many years the Step 1 exam has caused increased stress on students, mentally and financially. This should be addressed, especially if the exam is not an accurate barometer of an individual’s clinical performance.

Here are the public comments AMSA submitted in response to the four proposals. These comments were made with reference to AMSA’s governing documents, and were therefore based upon the decisions of AMSA members made in the House of Delegates.

Recommendation #1: Reduce the adverse impact of the current overemphasis on USMLE performance in residency screening and selection through consideration of changes such as pass/fail scoring, categorical/tiered scoring, and composite scoring.

AMSA urges the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) to report student performance as simply Pass/Fail to both students and state licensing boards, and provide medical schools with only a Pass/Fail statistical evaluation of the performance of their student population as a whole, with no documentation of individual student scores. We encourage each medical schools’ faculty to develop its own internal evaluation process, other than exclusive use of National Board examinations, utilizing a variety of testing devices to assess both the cognitive and noncognitive aspects of student performance and curriculum quality. We oppose the use of national board examinations for medical school accreditation, residency selection, student promotion, and as the exclusive mode of curriculum evaluation.

Recommendation #2: Accelerate research on the correlation of USMLE performance to measures of residency performance and clinical practice.

Here at AMSA, we believe in evidence-based practice in all realms. It is essential that we know if the numerical scoring of the USMLE correlates to residency performance or clinical practice. As it exists now, the USMLE scoring system to many appears to be an arbitrary assessment that residency and test prep companies use to their advantage. The current numerical scoring system also leads to students spending more money, to apply to more residency programs, and to utilize third party test prep companies in order to achieve a higher score, to ensure that they match into the specialty of their choice.

Recommendation #3: Minimize racial demographic differences that exist in USMLE performance.

AMSA believes that the increased representation of minority students in medical schools, not only as a result of concern for social equity, but also because such representation leads to positive and necessary changes in the attitudes of students, faculty and administrators, and hence to positive improvements in the health of society and in the health care delivery systems.

We must address racial demographic differences that exist in USMLE performance to ensure that we have diverse representations of physicians across all specialties. This is essential, because we must have a diverse physician workforce to represent our diverse patient population.

Recommendation #4: Convene a cross-organizational panel to create solutions for challenges in the UME-GME transition, such as��

1. reducing the number of applications perceived by residency applicants as necessary to obtain a position;
2. improving residency program directors’ ability to more holistically evaluate candidates; or��
3. improving the trust of school-based assessments for residency screening and selection.

AMSA has been on a number of cross-organizational panels over the years. This includes the NMBE and the NRMP, where we have had representatives speak on behalf of our organization. This also includes a group of medical student organizations in the U.S. that have come together to work together on many issues, such as the border crisis.�� We represent over 30,000 physicians in training, and we believe that our voice should be heard. Many of our students take the USMLE exams, and apply to residency programs in the U.S. We strongly believe in prioritizing students’ well-being, and the USMLE have been known to cause high levels of mental distress among students. It would be ideal to have a more holistic approach to assess candidates, which would more than likely lead to an increase in students’ well-being. This may also help with the financial burden of applying to residency, as students might not feel as pressured to apply to such a large number of programs if a more holistic method to assess applicants were to be used.

Isaiah Cochran, M.D.
National President

Britney Howard
Chair, Medical Education Action Committee

The post AMSA’s response to USMLE scoring change recommendations appeared first on AMSA.

On Nov. 29 and Dec. 1 the ACGME held a symposium on physician well-being, focusing on solutions to the epidemic of burnout, depression and suicide among physicians. Over a third of residents experience significant depressive symptoms, according to studies published this year in both Academic Medicine and JAMA. Many more medical students and residents are stressed and burned out, struggling with heavy workloads and not enough time for family and friends.

Given this harsh reality, many find it contradictory that the ACGME is proposing to weaken duty hour regulations. As CIR Northern California VP Josie Valenzuela put it,

“The AGGME says the evidence for worsening patient care in regards to sleep deprivation is equivocal, but any resident can tell you this is the case; just because you didn’t administer a harmful medication in error or cut the wrong vessel in surgery, doesn’t mean you are as attentive at hour 27 as at hour 2. No one seems to be addressing the impact of sleep deprivation, long hours, and circadian disruption has on wellness.”

The ACGME’s proposal would extend intern on-call shifts another 12 hours (from 16 to 24 + 4) and allow new flexibility in the rules so that all residents can stay longer than their 28-hour shift without the need to explain why. The ACGME’s proposals also put the burden solely on residents to identify when we are fatigued or impaired and do little to guarantee adequate staffing or safe workloads.

This is an issue that the national housestaff union, the Committee of Interns and Residents, has been working collaborating with AMSA on for decades. We must have a seat at the table in the decisions that affect our lives and safety. Our firsthand experience delivering patient care should be weighed very seriously if the goal is to improve both physician training AND patient safety.

CIR has called on the ACGME to:

– Guarantee residents a minimum of 5 days off per month with no averaging, and including one full weekend off.
– Ensure teaching hospitals provide adequate ancillary service staffing.
– Establish safe and sustainable resident workloads.
– Collect concrete data on resident car crashes, needlestick injuries and burnout as part of each institution’s Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) visit.
– Highlight the medical educator innovators who have already made significant changes to improve patient safety, resident learning, and satisfaction.
– Maintain the current duty hour limits.
– Work to redesign clinical training in fewer hours, improve the educational value of those hours, and guarantee the safety and well-being of the residents who are working them.

The ACGME is accepting public comments on their proposed regulations until December 19, and CIR will be submitting a formal comment within this time. If you would like to submit your own individual comment, you can do so .

The post ACGME Hour Changes Should Reflect Our Reality appeared first on AMSA.

Congratulations on your interview invites! ��Before you reach into that closet for your lucky interview suit, take a moment to celebrate how far you’ve come. Medical school has been quite the trip and you are now at the precipice of the next chapter of your career!

And now, back to work. ��The interview trail will be another part of your hero’s journey with weeks of��multiple interviews a couple days apart. ��As professional students, you have perfected the art of sniffing out expectations and meeting them. ��However, successful interviewing requires a different set of skills. ��Come interview day, you must confidently look your future directors and peers in the eye and tell them who you are and why you deserve to be trained there. ��Let’s address how to prepare for an unforgettable interview.

Step One: Soul Search

This is the most important and often overlooked step. ��For many of us, much of medical school has been a bit of a blur. ��Lack of sleep and the sheer amount of information processing has overshadowed some of our most important moments as doctors. ��In the last several years you have likely witnessed your first birth, your first death, touched internal organs, and handed out a lot of tissues. ��Somehow, you’ve also decided on a specialty that you are ready to devote the rest of your life to.

Take some time to reflect on how you’ve grown. ��Process with a friend (nonmedical friends will be especially insightful). ��Journal. ��How have you changed? What core qualities about yourself have not changed? Have you surprised yourself? ��The better you know yourself, the easier it will be to show people who truly you are, not just who you think they want you to be.

, bestselling author and entrepreneur puts it this way: “[Get] clear on your attributes, identify which of those attributes is most vital to your success and then define what you offer to the world as a result of those attributes… Image is a fragile thing. Sincerity is rock solid.”

Step Two: Create an Answer Bank

If you watch political debates, and it’s been hard to avoid them lately, you’ll notice that the candidates only address the question for a couple seconds before they transition to a carefully scripted oratorium on their achievements, credentials, and positive attributes. ��They can’t possibly have a direct answer for every question so they use an answer bank. ����Once they find a question that is remotely related to a good answer, they select from the bank and deliver.

Interviewing for residency is much less complicated but nearly as predictable and the same techniques can be leveraged to help you prep your way to the perfect debate, I mean interview.

This is where the endless hours spent practicing for test taking and answer recall actually helps. ��Go to my blog post on the for some sample questions to formulate answers to.

How do you best answer these questions? Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg theory says, “If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” ��Basically:

Show, don’t Tell.

A more intuitive way to approach your answer bank stems from the art of a good first date. ��How off-putting and boring would it be if your date responded to your opening “so, tell me about yourself” by listing their attributes? ��“I’m hard working, self motivated, blah blah blah.” ��Instead, as humans, we respond more naturally to stories. ��You’re much more likely to feel like you know who your date is and their strengths through the colorful glimpses of life experiences that they share with you. ��This approach will also help you deliver a good date, I mean interview. ��For more on the specifics of the perfect interview story, jump to my blog post on the . ��Make sure you have a story for each answer that you can deliver the moment the right question comes along.

Step Three: Practice, practice, practice

While being an intelligent people person with solid credentials might get you by, to truly shine you must practice, practice, practice.

Practice in front of the mirror. ��This way you can hear what your stories and answers sound like. ��Make edits and also identify the areas that you frequently stumble on and smooth them out.

Practice in front of a camera. ��This will make your go-to comfort phrases (um, like, etc) and non-verbal tics (wringing your hands, rocking back and forth, etc) painfully obvious.

Practice in front of a real live person/people. ��Recruit a friend, a partner, a family member, or a stranger to put the pressure on. ��Pay for an interview coaching session that can help you tweak your verbal and non-verbal presentation.

The key is to practice until it flows. ��If you only practice enough to get it right one or twice, during interview day your mental energy will be focused on recall. This defeats the whole purpose. ��If you practice until it comes out without effort, your mental energy will be free to engage with your interviewer.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” – Archilochos

Step Four: Deliver

Beyond the common sense prep (iron your outfit, write down/print out directions in case your phone dies, charge your phone, etc), here are a few tips that can help boost your confidence on interview day.

Before you leave your car, have a calming moment (here is one of my favorite five minute guided meditations, ) and set your intention for the day. ��Being grounded and confident will help you deal with the curveballs you get. ��Sometimes interviewers will ask a question they don’t expect you to know to gauge how well you think on your feet. ��Relax and maybe even put some humor into the answer.

Get your caffeine dose right. ��Too much coffee can lead to rambling and frequent bathroom breaks. ��See more about common mistakes in .

Right before your interview, Amy Cuddy’s “power posing” can leverage your body to calm and empower your mind. ��Stand with your arms up in a giant V, lift your chin, and smile as though you just crossed the line a toe in front of Usain Bolt. ��Or, put your hands on your hips and do your best Beyonce pose. ��This can be done quietly almost anywhere, preferably somewhere secluded. ��Watch Amy’s TEDTALK on . ��Be your best self to everyone. ��Many applicants have been blacklisted because they were rude to receptionists or two faced when talking to a stranger in the hall who turned out to be an important faculty member walking through. ��Even though you are under a lot of pressure that day, remember to be present with everyone you interact with.

After all that work on your presentation, remember that the interview is just as much a chance for you to gather information about the program. ��Get a feel for the culture fostered by the residents and attendings. ��Be curious. ��This is where good questions come from.

In conclusion, the best and most frustrating interview advice passed on to me from program directors and residents alike is this:

“Be yourself”

Maddening, isn’t it? ��But hidden in its simplicity is a lot of work. ��These four steps will give you the confidence to engage with your prospective programs and represent yourself authentically. ��Go knock their socks off.

Emiliy Tan, DO, is a coach at ��and this post is presented by the��. Emiliy’s an artist, turned horse trainer, turned surgeon. She says it’s been quite the journey with some rough patches. As an MS4, Emiliy went unmatched. Disappointed but undeterred, she regrouped, did some soul searching, picked up some new tricks, and successfully reapplied. Not everyone fits the match formula as presented by our deans and guidance counselors, she says, and she’s excited to share what she has learned so far.

The post How to Ace Your Residency Interview appeared first on AMSA.

The mission of the AMSA (AMSA) is built upon our members’ commitment to advocate for high quality health care, excellence in physician training, and the protection and promotion of the welfare of physicians-in- training and our patients. We are dedicated to excellence in our training and practice and remain in awe of this sacred art and tradition we are fortunate to be a part of. To that end, AMSA fully supports the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s (ACGME’s) position that residency training should ultimately be designed to produce competent, autonomous, caring physicians. However, we remain concerned about the safety of patients and ourselves given the current climate of graduate medical education. While we are aware that there are multiple ailments currently affecting both the medical system and graduate education, we still believe that limits on medical resident work hours are an important part of the solution.

There is a continued need for resident duty hour limits as part of our shared obligation to resident well-being and high-quality patient care. We believe that resident duty hour requirements should be based on the most current research on sleep, learning, patient safety and care, and resident well-being. Research has shown that acute and chronic sleep deprivation are detrimental to learning, which is in-fact a primary goal of residency training. We continue to recommend that the number of hours a resident physician may work per week should not exceed an absolute limit of 80 without averaging. We believe that the maximum number of hours worked consecutively per shift should not exceed 16, no matter the stage of training and that residents should have at least 10 hours off between shifts.

It is critical that both robust enforcement and evaluation of resident duty hour limits occur in order to maintain and enhance the quality of resident medical education and the quality of patient care. AMSA is committed to evidence-based training that reflects best practices for both learning and safety. In order to fully realize the benefits of resident duty hour limits or to reliably evaluate the effects, resident duty hours need to be reported accurately, and the duty hour limits need to be enforced consistently. Despite efforts to promote an environment of honest reporting and adherence to the current duty-hour requirements, residents continue to underreport hours to their programs. This occurs for a variety of reasons including fear of retaliation or fear of a negative impact to their program if it were to be penalized by the ACGME.

We ask that the ACGME:

1. Reject any calls to remove the 16-consecutive- hour limit for first-year resident (interns);

2. Apply the 16-hour cap to all residents, and

3. Rescind its waivers that have allowed the iCOMPARE and FIRST trials to continue.

AMSA is dedicated to our profession, to excellence and to adapting medicine and medical education to the present-day world in which we live. There are models currently in place in which learning opportunities exist, but also in which work hour protections are not compromised and neither is the safety or education of residents. We have a responsibility to ensure that we keep patients and trainees from harm, while providing the best care that we can. AMSA is urging the ACGME to ensure that we do no harm, to patients, or to our trainees.

Sincerely,

Physicians-in- training

to the ACGME concerning Section VI of the Commom Program Requirements,��The Learning and Working Environment during the recent 45-day open comment period, which closed December 19, 2016.

The post We need to stand in solidarity against rolling back protective work hour restrictions! appeared first on AMSA.

Fellow medical and pre-medical students, this is a call to action to stand together to help change the culture of education in our schools and that of our future workplace environments, to remove the pressures that make our colleagues succumb to ending their lives. Physician and medical student suicide is a serious epidemic in the United States, and is one that is being addressed by several organizations and individuals, including AMSA.

Saturday August 20th is the National Day of Solidarity for the Prevention of Physician Suicide and an organization called Care2 is hosting events in 11 major cities across the country that day. If you are interested in standing in solidarity with physicians and medical students at an event near you, visit Care2’s website for more information:

Please sign this petition to demand that the AAMC and ACGME take action to prevent suicide in our community:

If you are seeking educational resources for learning and teaching about this topic, visit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention website as a good starting point:

If you are interested in taking action to make changes in the culture of medical education at your institution or expanding the influence of legislation regarding these topics, and would like AMSA’s backing, send an e-mail to wsl.advocacy@amsa.org. We are comprised of students like you and are here to make sure your voice is heard.

Thanks,
Elisa Vengalil
AMSA Wellness & Student Life Committee, Advocacy Coordinator
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, M.D. Candidate

Sources:
1.

The post Wellness Wednesday: Standing in Solidarity to Prevent Physician Suicide appeared first on AMSA.

In 2013, Jennifer Packing-Euben, MD, was in her first year of the Florida Hospital Family Residency Program, and feeling somewhat dazed by the experience. Fast forward to July, 2016. What words of wisdom does she offer? “Priorities,” says Packing-Euben. “It is all about getting priorities straight.”

Not all residents have the same priorities, of course, but for Packing-Euben, most challenging was balancing family and work time. In truth, there can be no balance, she says. “You’re going to try to balance what you know is your focus – training – and the people you care about the most, those who need the most from you. But they’re going to feel the lack of attention from you, and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”

For Packing-Euben, the importance of family affected everything, even before residency began. Finding a program based on location was key, so she could be close to her husband. It required that she take a serious look at the way programs are evaluated. Many students, according to Packing-Euben, believe prestige is most important. “A big name isn’t going to necessarily affect the quality of your training,” she says, and sacrificing close proximity to loved ones would have had a negative impact on her life. It was hard enough to know she wasn’t able to give her family all they needed from her – to be far away physically wasn’t an option.

Her family made sacrifices on her behalf throughout residency, however her intern year required the most. Making it through this difficult evolution in relationships is predicated upon preparation – identifying new rules for communicating needs and having expectations met. Packing-Euben’s husband, also a physician, had realistic expectations when she began her residency. “He knew what to expect,” she says, and believes that is definitely a part of what kept their relationship strong. During his residency, ⅓ of physicians divorced. Of the twelve residents working alongside Packing-Euben, two experienced major breakups.

It isn’t always a lack of attention to relationships that causes strain. There are, according to Packing-Euben, genuinely dark moments during residency. “Not only is it the least amount of sleep you ever thought you could have,” she recalls, “but it’s a huge amount of brain power, physical and emotional energy, and you have to constantly perform.” The pressure is enormous, and there is no let-up.

She found strength by identifying physicians she knew she would want to emulate in the future. “You have to mold yourself in the moment,” she acknowledges, “based on whomever is in charge of you that day.” But she recommends starting out residency by seeking characteristics worthy of adopting in the future. “Everyone has their own way,” she says. Look for the way certain physicians handle themselves, and learn how to best comport yourself in the future. “Find role models.”

Those role models are especially apparent in stronger programs, so Packing-Euben recommends looking for them during the interview process. “Within the first hour or two of the interview,” she says, “you’ll know if it’s a malignant program.” She describes such a program as one which does not include interns in the process, or if everyone appears unreasonably exhausted. (In spite of legislation and rules, there are “grey zones,” according to Packing-Euben, with regard to how many hours residents work.) “You want to look for how authoritarian people are, the way they talk to one another,” she asserts. It requires a bit of sleuthing. “Read between the lines, and take notes – of negatives and positives.”

The presence of interns during the social interview was most important to her. “If they’re not there, unable to give feedback and an assessment of their experience, that’s a red flag to me.” Packing-Euben also tried to ensure her goals and agenda aligned with the program director’s. “They want a strong program, of course,” she acknowledges, but the definition of strength can vary between director and resident.

Looking back, Packing-Euben genuinely liked how much “it all came together in residency … in the fourth year of med school, you’re starting to get it, almost functioning like an intern.” But she was shocked at the difference between first and second year of residency. “The system really does work. Yes, you’re crushed, but the reason you do it is because you see it, and see it again, and again, and you remind yourself, and all of a sudden, it makes sense.” Packing-Euben remembers beginning to feel the nuances when it was time to make decisions, and feeling happy about what she was going to do for the rest of her life. “What I was doing really came together.” That had been a slight concern, since she’d been “one of those in med school who liked everything. I ended up in GM because when I went to residency I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted my daily life to look like. But then it all came together when I felt like I was actually becoming a doctor.” Reflecting on how she felt upon residency completion compared to when she first donned the white coat at the start of medical school, Packing-Euben says there is no real comparison. “I shun the whole white coat,” she says with a laugh. “Not only the connotations, but the infectious disease side!”

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