Episode 14 - Transitioning to Residency

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Emotional Millennial. My name is Annie and I'm super excited that you're here. This podcast is all about sharing authentic thoughts, ideas, vulnerabilities, insecurities, just things that I'm going through that real people deal with that they just don't like to talk about. And here I am volunteering, and I'm willing to talk about these things because I think it's so important that we share our stories so that we're able to connect and feel like we're not alone. Because you aren't alone.

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This past month has been pretty crazy for me with transitioning to residency, transitioning to my very first ever big time, big girl job. I've never earned a salary before in my life, and so it's pretty cool to be getting a paycheck and actually be making money instead of spending an insane amount of money contributing to my debt. So here we are, finally on the up and up and hopefully going to be able to pay off that debt in the near future. So today I'm going to talk about how my first three weeks of residency have been going, things I've been experiencing, and also how I prepared for residency, what that time leading up to starting my residency program was like, the things that I had to do basically that time from match day to day one. What was I going through, what was I feeling, thinking?

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And what were the kind of tasks that I accomplished prior to starting? After I matched, I was honestly just so excited to finally have a job and not go unmatched again that I was kind of in cloud nine, not really thinking about anything I had to do prior to starting. And so once I started receiving all of these emails about all of these tasks I had to complete, it was pretty overwhelming, especially since I have not done anything for the past year. Basically just sitting on my couch, hanging, doing whatever I want with my time. And I knew that transitioning into having a full time job and having all these things I needed to do every single day was going to be a challenging period for me, and it definitely has been prior to starting your residency position.

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There are a lot of miscellaneous random tasks you have to complete, and maybe this is the case with every single job. I wouldn't know because this is my first ever real time salary earning job. But lots of training, lots of online modules, lots of signing papers, applying for your license, your graduate medical license so that you can actually practice medicine, your license to prescribe controlled substances, have to go get your photo taken for your ID badge. I had to go get a physical, and at my physical they drug test through urine and I also had to give blood, but that was for a TB test. I was kind of thinking like, why do you guys need my blood?

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This feels a little weird, but it's just so you don't have to get two TB tests, like on your arm and get them read. They can just do like, the Quanta fear on test and know right away that you don't have tuberculosis.

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So the location that I matched at, I'm not going to say the program because I feel like that would be a little too much, but I'm in a family medicine residency program and because of COVID and because of virtual interviewing, the place that I matched, I had never stepped foot on the campus until my day one of orientation, which is pretty wild. I knew what the hospital looked like and what the clinic looked like based on videos that they posted online, but I had yet to actually set foot there myself. So I'm very happy that when I did actually go, I absolutely love it and it's actually better than the videos, in my opinion. So very exciting for me. I'm very lucky to have an entire month of orientation where I feel like we're just kind of getting our feet wet, getting introduced to various aspects of the clinic, getting to know each other, our class.

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It's really important to me to have good relationships with everybody that I'm going to be spending the next three years with. And building that during this month of orientation is a really cool aspect of my program. I'm also grateful for this month because I'm feeling a bit rusty. I haven't been doing anything for a year and I did have experience in the clinic and I've been still doing research and such, but it's very different to be working with people once a week compared to like, now when I'm going to be working with people every single day. It's definitely a lot for me to adjust to.

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So prior to starting residency, I was feeling super lonely. I really missed being on a team and being able to work with other people and being surrounded by, likeminded, individuals who motivate me and make me feel like I'm on the right path. I'm doing this thing that makes me really happy and being in that community that's so supportive. I missed that I didn't have that for a year. So now I'm transitioning from this period of extreme loneliness into constantly being surrounded by people, which is funny because now at times, it's a little bit overwhelming for me.

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So that is an aspect of this transition that has been a little bit hard for me. I'm so used to being home alone, doing whatever it is I want with my time and just being with myself and my thoughts. And now every day I'm constantly surrounded by other people and hearing their thoughts all the time and engaging in, I don't know, like, talking with people all the time. It's a lot like I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed, honestly. And it's going to take me a little bit, I know, to get used to it.

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I know that I will and I know that it's going to be a good thing, but it's just so funny how much I've changed personally over the past year because my direct surrounding environment has changed so drastically. I am an introvert and I do need that time and space to have completely to myself where I can just be off, not like putting on a smile and trying to interact with people and being that people pleaser that I sometimes can be. It's really important for me to have that time alone where I can decompress and not feel like I'm doing anything other than just existing. That really is a break for me and I've been trying to do that. Like, at lunch, I'll get some alone time, but it's definitely been hard for me.

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I finally got my first long white coat and I swear I almost cried. I'm so excited about it. I have co residents that never went unmatched and so they're getting another white coat and it's kind of just like, oh, I don't want to wear this thing. Like I probably never will. And meanwhile, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to wear this every day.

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I'm so excited. I have it just like, hanging on the back of my passenger seat in my car and I just absolutely love that I have that. It's so symbolic for me and it means a lot to me. And to see my name stitched into it is just like one of the coolest things in the world. So I'm very proud and excited to finally have that.

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I also bought some very supportive shoes so that when I'm walking around the hospital and on rotations that I can wear scrubs, not for business casual, but just some nice I think I got like adidas air boost, if that's what they're called. I can't remember at the moment, but they're really comfortable and supportive, which is important for me because I have back problems. Love that. It has been really nice for me to feel like I'm getting back into a routine where I'm making a lunch for myself. I can, like, eat better because I'm planning more ahead of time about the things that I'm doing throughout the week.

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And with my year off, having all that time to myself, I felt very aimless, purposeless and kind of lost at times. And so now having a place that I need to be every day and getting into that schedule, I feel much more regimented and I think this is a great opportunity for me to build better habits, to take better care of myself. And in turn, I think that's going to help with taking care of my mental health and I'm very excited about that. It's also been nice to just feel like I have more of a purpose to see that my name is the name of the doctor who's seeing these patients. It sounds so silly, but these small little details really make me light up and realize and recognize why I went into medicine in the first place.

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It was really easy for me to lose sight of that after not matching and feeling like I didn't belong. And now I feel like I belong again, and it's very empowering and it's really just a great feeling for me. Something else I've done to kind of prepare is I turned in my iPad Mini from medical school to get, like, some credit to buy a new iPad Mini for residency. And I think it's really perfect because it fits right into my white coat pocket and I can read on it, take notes on it, I can look things up about patients on it. Since we use Epic at my institution for patient charting, it's been really nice to be able to pull up patient information on Haiku, which is an app that you can use on your iPhone or iPad.

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And it's just like super handy and convenient so you don't have to sign into a desktop computer every time you want to look up something about one of your patients. So I like that. I know there are a lot of other people who feel this way who just started residency the month of July. We're all just kind of trying to stay afloat. We all feel like we have no idea what we're doing, despite having an insane amount of training, and we probably do know exactly what we're doing.

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But it is imposter syndrome. It's hard to feel like you have human beings, you have the health of another individual, another person in your hands. And that's a challenging concept. As a medical student, at the end of the day, we weren't responsible for anything. We're just kind of like here, hanging out here to help if we can, even though we most of the time can't really do anything other than watch.

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But now we're making decisions. We have a say. This is how we begin to develop our own practice of medicine and how we want to treat our patients. And as exciting as it is, it is equally scary. Of course, we always have attendings, like, overseeing everything that we're doing, but I know at least at my program, they really try to encourage us to do what we feel we should be doing rather than just listening to what they say.

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If we go to precept a patient or talk about lab results that we received in our inbox, which is also crazy that we're ordering lab results and that we get them to our inbox, what the first thing that they'll say is, okay, well, what do you want to do? And I'm like, well, I don't know. What should I do? And they put you in a position to think about it because we're capable of that. This is what we've been training to do.

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And so? I don't know. It's a really odd concept if you're a resident, I'm sure you know Icuk if you know, you know, but wow, it just is so different and scary and stressful, to be honest. I've been trying to build up the confidence in myself, and I know that I'm a competent physician. I'm always striving to do the best for my patients and I have their best interests at heart.

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And so it's just going to be a learning process of learning to trust my knowledge. Learning to trust my intuition. And not secondguessing the things that I want to do. But constantly being open to the fact that I might be wrong and being open to learning at all times and hearing other perspectives of maybe trying a different treatment plan or seeing what someone else might do instead. I've had a few patients so far, and it's just so cool to know that I am building my own patient panel and that I don't know that these people think of me as their primary care doctor.

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That's all I've really wanted since I've gone into medicine. And it's just so freaking cool that it's happening. There's a lot of feelings happening right now. There's excitement, there's nerves, there's stress, there's the adjustment mentally and physically too, honestly, because I'm used to sleeping however much I want. Now it's like, oh, I actually have to go to bed at ten and wake up early in the morning and setting my alarm and stuff.

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And lots, lots of changes, lots of adjustments. But I'm trying to keep a positive outlook and keeping it all as exciting as possible. So I feel like that's a pretty good summary of prior to starting residency and kind of how I've been feeling for these first three weeks. My first actual real rotation is the month of August, and I'm inpatient pediatrics, which I'm really excited for. It's one of the more challenging ones that we have, but I will definitely keep you guys updated as to how that goes and how I handle all of that.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I hope this was helpful. If you're in medicine, if you're interested in entering medicine, if you have any questions, please reach out to methemotionalmillennial@gmail.com. And as always, transcripts for my podcast episodes are available on my website, Emotional Millennial.com. Thank you again and have a wonderful day.

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Bye.