Graduating from Residency
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THE LEARNER'S VOICE
Graduating from Residency Nathaniel P. Morris 1 Received: 28 July 2020 / Accepted: 8 September 2020 # Academic Psychiatry 2020
“It’s for the best,” I say to my parents over the phone. We have been talking about canceling their flights and their planned trip for our program’s residency graduation. Our training program already canceled its reservations at a local restaurant for graduation and, as a pandemic rages around us, some sort of virtual ceremony seems all but certain. “Really,” I insist, “It’s just residency graduation.” Residency graduation often attracts less attention than other milestones in medical training. Undergraduate and medical school graduations are known for their pomp and circumstance, the gowns and the mortarboards, the crowds and the commencement speakers, the processions and diplomas. More than 44,000 residents graduated from US training programs during the 2017 to 2018 academic year, but residency graduations are usually more intimate affairs [1]. Ceremonies might include certificates, remarks, and perhaps some awards over a luncheon or a dinner. As one physician wrote about residency graduation in 2011, “At the initiation of your residency, after having received a medical degree, you were legally a medical doctor. Now that you have finished your formal training, you have the potential to become a true Healer” [2]. This transition from a physician to a more capable physician can seem ill-defined. After all, residents typically do not get any new degrees or letters after our names upon graduation. Keeping track of the differences between medical students, residents, fellows, and attending physicians can be challenging for patients, patients’ families, and our colleagues. This year, residency graduations may seem even less important amid a pandemic. Yet, residency training is a profound part of becoming a physician, and its completion warrants a moment for reflection. After medical school, residents work within the specialties that we have chosen and grapple with enormous new responsibilities in patient care, ranging from prescribing
* Nathaniel P. Morris [email protected] 1
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
medications to ordering diagnostic tests to pronouncing someone’s death. Despite these increased responsibilities, residents remain under supervision by more seasoned clinicians. Residents often work alone in the hospital overnight, managing dozens of patients and all kinds of life-threatening situations, but we typically need permission from supervisors to discharge someone home. Residents spend hours documenting patients’ histories, current conditions, and treatment plans, but attending physicians still have to review our notes and co-sign them for approval. Residents sit in clinic with patients whom we have seen for months or years and developed close bonds with, yet there is still that knock on the door at the end of each visit as an attending steps in to review the plan together. Residency is a stage in medical training
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