🙋 Raise your hand if you're curious about how medical training works
August marks the start of orthopedic surgery visiting sub-internship month.
If you're curious about how we move from being a medical student to a surgeon, it all starts here.
In March of the last year of medical school, medical students are 'matched' to residency programs. This system is highly stressful, but it ensures that all the residency spots in the country are appropriately filled (not just the best ones at the best programs).
So a computer essentially decides your fate. You rank your favorite residency programs, they rank their favorite applicants, and the "Match" spits out a result.
In the summer and fall before this, a wild few months ensue. Basically, you're one of thousands of applicants going for an orthopedic residency spot. Most residencies only train about 5 surgeons per year. Not good odds!
So we all do several away rotations, otherwise known as visiting sub-internships. These are essentially one-month auditions where you move to a new city, work in a new hospital with a new team — and try like heck to impress them for a month.
Without fail, programs are more likely to try to match with a sub-intern they liked (they got to see them work for a month) over somebody they just randomly interviewed for a few hours (formal residency interviews occur in December/January).
So you can imagine the stress and pressure sub-interns are under for that 4-week audition! Because these tryouts occur away from your medical school, but before you're a resident (paid employee)...there are essentially no rules.
We all think of residency as hard work and long hours (and it was). But this 4-week sprint was unlike anything I ever experienced.
Like, say, waking up to a 3:15 am alarm for 28 consecutive days...
To all those "sub-Is" out there...wishing you the best of luck!
