Internist 4 Life

Some of you may wonder where I've been for the last year and a half. "What happened to you, Medicine Intern? Where did you go?" Some of you already know the answer. No, I haven't been trapped at home because of an unfortunate choice in soap! I've just been busy with life, mostly with residency. The work hour restrictions for medicine interns and residents basically came about at exactly the right time to not benefit me at all, and the effect in my residency program to shift more work and responsibility onto the junior and senior residents. It was funny, I thought I was so busy intern year, I had no idea it could get any worse. And by "worse," do I mean "better"? Like, "way better"?

Ha! No, hopeful intern, I do not. And if you're not intimately familiar with internal medicine residency, it used to be a system where first year you "hit the ground running," and by that I mean "feel like you've been thrown out of a helicopter onto a freeway and try to keep up with traffic," but at least it got easier over time, with senior residents serving in a supervising role over the poor beleaguered interns. Now the work load and culture are changing so that the interns have less patient care experience, with more of the patient care (including direct care as well as charting, paperwork, etc.) belonging to the senior residents, who are also still functioning in a supervising role. Ironically, having more of  what was previously the interns' workload means the residents actually have less time to carefully scrutinize what the interns are doing. Good? Bad? And for whom? Time will tell. But thank you, ACGME, for allowing me the opportunity to be an intern, if not for life, at least for 3 consecutive years. Or, "resitern" as we call it.

At any rate, I'm at the end of my residency now. In just a few short weeks I'll be released into the wild. And by the "wild" I mean "job market" and "real world." I have recently forced myself to apply for some jobs, and actually received my first job offer this past week. That was good.

It was sent via email, and immediately followed by an email to "recall" that job offer. THAT WAS LESS GOOD.

Seriously? Seriously? Does this stuff really only happen to me? Let me know what you think... especially if you're thinking of hiring an Internist4Life...

Next post to come:
How to Get a Job After Internal Medicine Residency: My Best Guess