Children And Alphabet Soup

Residency application season is in full swing. On September 1st, the online application opened it's doors for the thousands of applicants to start flooding residency programs with shiny application, sparkly resumes, and glowing letters of recommendation (affectionately called LoR's in the application world).

To say it's a maddening system is an understatement. The whole process is dominated by what I like to call the Application Alphabet Soup. The applicant must be able to sift through more acronyms than you can shake a Bovie at. ERAS, NRMP, ECFMG, LoR, OASIS, ACGME are just a few such acronyms. However, through sheer grit and determination Your Humble Observer has somehow managed to work his way through.

The response has been fairly positive thus far with a few bumps in the road. For now, it's all about scheduling interviews and trying to decide what features of a residency program are important to the individual applicant.

In the meantime, I have found myself in one of the more rewarding rotations - Pediatrics. It's great to see the kids get better and be up and around playing in the playroom, and of course, you've got to love the well child visits where the kids are happy, healthy, and playful. It's an interesting rotation, but I doubt the field is for me.

The rotation will be over at the end of this week, then I get two glorious weeks to spend with my family back in the homeland. After that it's back to NYC for an Endocrinology rotation. Please reference schedule below.