By Camila R. Guetter
Dear soon-to-be interns, congratulations on finishing medical school and welcome to residency! You are about to embark upon a very challenging but rewarding journey. In residency you will create lifelong friendships. You will also learn how to excel as a surgeon, a leader, a mentee, a mentor, an educator, and a surgeon-scientist.
We all know how transition times can be tough and how they can bring a lot of anxiety, just like when you went from college to medical school, or from your pre-clinical years to clerkship years in medical school. You are here though, which means you have all it needs to succeed!
A lot of the anxiety in this transition time comes from uncertainty on what to expect and what will be expected from you. Main questions new interns have include how to best organize your time, how to study during residency, how to maintain work-life integration and wellness, and how to succeed as an intern overall. To answer these and any other questions, residents from the AWS Resident and Fellow Committee and the RAS-ACS are organizing a tweetchat to share our experiences and help you get ready to get started.
Please join us on Monday, June 20th, 2022, 8-9 PM EST, for an AWS TweetChat on tips to survive (and thrive!) during your intern year. The chat will be moderated by members of the Association of Women Surgeons (AWS) Resident and Fellow Committee, and the Resident and Associate Society of the American College of Surgeons (RAS-ACS).
Moderators:
- Camila R. Guetter (@camila_guetter): Rising PGY-2 General Surgery resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School
- Shan Lansing (@ShanSLansing): Rising PGY-2 General Surgery resident at Oregon Health & Science University
- Brianna Spencer (@brianna59213847): Rising second year research fellow at University of Michigan. Previously completed PGY 3 General Surgery at Penn State.
- Rashi Singh (@Rashi2S): Rising PGY4 General Surgery resident at University Hospitals/Case Western Reserve University
- Brittany Johnson (@brittljohn): Rising PGY-5 General Surgery resident at UMMC, Future Pediatric Surgery Fellow at University of Michigan/Mott Children’s
The tweetchat questions will be posted directly from the @WomenSurgeons Twitter account. You can also find them by following the hashtag #AWSchat. If you have not participated in a tweet chat with us before, check out this tutorial written by Dr. Heather Yeo (@heatheryeomd) to know more. We will be discussing the following questions during our tweet chat:
- Staying organized is key during residency. What are some tips on how to stay organized with your daily tasks and workflow?
- It’s easy to get busy and forget to take care of yourself as an intern. What are some tips on how to take care of your physical and mental health during residency?
- Depending on the program/especially you are on, you may have annual exams to take. How can you find time to study during residency?
- How can you find mentors during residency?
- What is something you wish you knew before you became an intern?
Last but not least, remember that you are not alone! All residents (in your program and elsewhere) were interns once, so don’t hesitate to ask for help and advice when you need it. AWS and ACS are great platforms for meeting people (mentors and friends) that can help you through this journey as well. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for each one of you and to see you shine as residents!
Camila R. Guetter, MD MPH, is a rising PGY-2 General Surgery resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. Born and raised in Brazil, she graduated medical school from the Federal University of Parana in Curitiba, Brazil. She obtained a Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health before starting residency. She has been a proud and active member of AWS since 2015. In her free time she enjoys playing tennis, traveling, and spending time with her intern class!
Our blog is a forum for our members to speak, and, as such, statements made here represent the opinions of the author and are not necessarily the opinion of the Association of Women Surgeons.