Breaking Down the Trail

It's long-delayed, but I think this breakdown of my trip is long overdue. It's been a tough few months though it has been immensely fun, exciting, and rewarding. In many ways, I don't think I will have an opportunity like this again to really enjoy my time and go through this humbling yet uplifting interviewing experience. Life will never be the same again, and I will only get exceedingly busier from here on out. It really has breezed by, and I never thought I did enough, learnt enough, worked hard enough, but it's also apparent to me now that I will never get this chance to relax and hang out like this again.

But back to the purpose of this post. Let's start with the first batch in chronological order.

First up is Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia. This was my very first interview, and the pre-interview supper was on Halloween's day. I had just taken Step 2, and it was definitely a huge, buzzing excitement to get all this started.

9 residents accepted 27 residents total; categorical program

Pros

• Strengths: ICU/neurocritical care, stroke, epilepsy
• Categorical program; integrative internal medicine
• Cohesive unit of attendings, residents, and medical students
• Residents seem happy
• Residents love their nurses
• Program is resident responsive changes
• Expanding departments and hiring new faculty
• Lots of subspecialties
• Two-week rotations intense and then two week rotations of chill
• Central Philadelphia has lots of diverse activities to do
• Interdisciplinary department that involves neurosurgery, neurology, psychiatry, cognitive neurology
• Growing: dementia, als, movement disorders, neuromuscular
• Appealing: lots of mentoring opportunities for attending to resident and resident to medical student; strong clinical background and tertiary center; buddy system and boot camp at start of pgy2; night float for pgy3 and 4
• AMC representation:2 neurology

Cons

• Research isn't as strong
• Movement disorders is new
• No formal medical education training
• Charles isn’t going to be close by?

Overall, I really liked this program. Dr. Hanspal trained here and had good things to say; Dr. Skidmore and Dr. Kremens remembered her and wanted to say hi. There’s AMC representation here, and people seem pretty happy. There’s continued connection with the internal medicine people, and it looks like everyone gets along well. It also seems like there’s good support of the students here. On the other hand, their research doesn’t seem as strong in certain aspects, and their movement disorders program is just newly upcoming. Also, two out of four of my interviewers noticed my neurotransmitter earrings.

Next up will be Buffalo to look forward to!