|
|
|
|
s I look back over the course of my residency experience, there have been days that stand out as the "best" and the "worst", and I outlined them and the reasons why they occurred in Residency Insight 21 last week. However, looking back upon those days with critical eye, I realize, now, that the specific details of these events (both my successes and my failures) don't matter – they are in the past and today is a new day. What is important are the attitudes and events that brought me into those situations in the first place. It is important to consider both your successes and your failures, to try to determine the circumstances and events which lead you into both your "best" and "worst" days, in the hopes that you can make positive changes in the future.
|
|
by Ryan Fitzgerald, DPM
PRESENT RI Associate Editor
Washington Hospital Center
Washington, DC
|
You will be tired; you will be stressed, and there will be days where it will be easy to let
your exhaustion get the better of you. However, it is during these times that it is most critical that you seek to maintain your momentum and your positive attitude. It is during these times when you are most exhausted that the seeds for your
"best" or "worst" experiences will be sown, and it will be your perseverance at these times in maintaining your level of preparation, your positive attitude, and your ability to communicate effectively that will matter most. It is up to you to determine which it will be: a "best" or "worst" day experience. Learn from your successes and, perhaps even more so, from your failures, and you will have the opportunity to generate many more "best" days throughout your residency career, while simultaneously limiting the number of "worst" experiences.
Each of us has the opportunity to have truly great residency experiences. We are entering this profession as it is on a meteoric rise; this is our time to soak up all of the knowledge available from our attendings, our upper-level residents, and those we encounter during our off-service rotations, to help us to develop into the physicians and surgeons we will become. In each experience—with every success and failure—there is a salient truth waiting to be found, and I challenge you to look back over the course of your residency training to those instances of your greatest successes and failures, to seek out those truths and the circumstances behind them. Your ability to recreate your successes and to learn from your failures will ultimately allow you to build a catalogue of positive experiences—a series of "best" days—that will help you to have a more fulfilling, rewarding career both in your residency training, as well as into your life in the "real" world following residency.
We at PRESENT love hearing from you; if you have experiences you would like to share regarding your "Best" or "Worst" days in residency, please contact us and your responses will be posted. Keep up your momentum, this is your time!
|
|
|
|
|
