Family Medicine Residency Recap

When Scott graduated from medical school, I had every intention of documenting residency similar to how we documented medical school - by rotations or milestones. While I started following that schedule of posts, I quickly discovered that a milestone check would be pointless. Primarily because every residency is different and our experience making it through one or more in-patient months or surgery rotations would not likely be similar to another resident's experience, even across family medicine, much less in another specialty. So while it might have been interesting to my parents, it likely wouldn't have been helpful to any medical students or their significant others.

Before my husband entered medical school I was so concerned about how to become embedded in that new community and support my student husband. That concern didn't translate over to residency, which makes sense. Going into residency, I already had four years of experience supporting my husband on this medical journey. I didn't have any reservations about how that might change in residency, because even if there were changes (and life was different, for sure), I knew from experience that I could roll with it.

Residency, for us, was better than medical school in many ways. The biggest change was that compared to third and fourth year of medical school, I saw Scott so much more in residency. Sure, he was working long hours and nights, but every day he was home for some portion of the day and he was usually in the same city. I can't say the same for medical school. In residency, Scott still studied, but it wasn't as much and there was much less pressure for boards. We made great friends in residency, as well as in the community, and we had so much fun exploring a part of the country that we probably wouldn't have lived in otherwise.

Intern year (the first year of any residency) took some getting used to because we were in a new city, with new friends, in a new job that was demanding for someone who'd never really practiced medicine before. But at the end of first year, everyone said to me, "Don't worry! Second and third year are so much better." And they were! Most likely better because I knew what to expect as far as time commitment at work and at home, but also because even in the hardest rotations it seemed like Scott was better prepared to handle them and made more time for life balance.

Our biggest piece of advice that we pass on to anyone entering the residency phase, or for that matter, any phase of a medical journey is this -

Expect that this journey will be hard and that you'll rarely see your spouse. If you and your student/resident/fellow both start the program with the expectation that s/he is going to work hard and commit to get the most out of this training experience, while trying to balance home life, then you'll always be pleasantly surprised when it isn't as hard as you expected.

And now, a video containing some highlights. Enjoy!