Match day

Thursday was the official Match Day for graduating med school seniors, which means most of my classmates found out on Thursday where they're going to be doing their residencies (I've known since December, since the military match is early).

The day started with sleeping in (always a good thing), as 4th years get the day off. Then we had a "breakfast" (bagels and such) in the med school lobby before gathering at the Fawcett Center. At 11:30, they began the festivities with half an hour of incredibly boring speeches (well, mostly; Dr. Lucey, one of our vice deans, had some pretty funny statistics about how my class did in the match) and then they let us get our envelopes, which contained our match results (as I had already matched, I knew what mine would say). Then, at 12, they rang the bell, allowing us to open our envelopes. Nobody is allowed to know match results until 12 Eastern time. Kinda sucks for the students at University of Hawaii; their match is at 6am.

After that was a reception, and then the drinking events began promptly at 1 (I spent the time with Adrienne's family, so I didn't hit the bars until that night). Adrienne was rather excited--she matched at her first choice, and then her and Jeff put in an offer on a house, which was accepted. So new job and new house, all before 4pm.

We caught up with the rest of our classmates (at least, most of them) at 7pm, and everyone seemed really happy (I guess those who weren't happy probably weren't in the mood to be celebrating with the rest of the class). Almost everyone I talked to matched at one of their top three choices (that's considered a successful match). There were some pretty impressive names on that list, too, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Vanderbilt, UCLA, etc. All in all, it was a good day for OSU College of Medicine Class of 2009.

Sick professors and endless didactics

So, it's been awhile since my last post... sorry. There's just not a lot going on in Dodd Hall.

I had a couple of new patients yesterday--a man who was ejected from a single-car crash on Jan. 31 and a woman who had had a burst aneurysm in her head after being pushed against a wall at work (a center for "troubled" teens). The woman is rather easy and probably won't be at Dodd for very long, but the man has quite a few problems, including a broken pelvis (surgically fixed but still healing) and several other surgical sites. He also has quite a lot of pain in his foot due to nerve damage. The hospital where he was staying since the accident (not OSU) had him on all sorts of narcotics, which aren't that great for nerve pain, so we're working on changing him over to better medications. It'll be a long process, but on the plus side, his brain injury isn't too bad, so he might actually get to return to a somewhat-normal life, unlike many of the patient on the traumatic brain injury service.

This morning I saw these patients, then headed over to Children's for didactics and a quiz this afternoon. The topic this week was domestic violence and children with complicated cases (either medically or developmentally). Not too thrilling, and none of us really wanted to be there--tomorrow is match day for most of my classmates (the military matches in December, but civilians match tomorrow), so nobody was thinking about didactics anyway. As one of my residents put it, match day is one of the three important days that dictates the path of your life; marriage and birth of a child are the other two. So it's a really big deal, and I'm looking forward to celebrating with my classmates tomorrow.

Match results!

The military match results came in this morning at 0600 EST. I have, obviously, been looking forward to this moment for months, if not years. Here it is:

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research preventive and occupational medicine residency class of 2013

Yay! That was my first choice and I'm quite thrilled with the results. Tonight is our post-match Military Medicine Interest Group meeting, so I'll find out how my military classmates did and where they'll be going.

Anyway, here's my schedule for the next four years:

July 2009-June 2010: transition year internship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
July 2010-June 2011: Master's of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (or Master's of Public Health) at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (or, if I get an MPH, at Johns Hopkins University)
July 2011-June 2012: Preventive Medicine practicum year at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
July 2012-June 2013: Occupational Medicine practicum year at the USUHS

I don't know how they expect me to do work today. I'm too excited!

Epi chiefs meeting and out-processing

There wasn't a whole lot for me to do today, so I sat in on the epi chiefs meeting at AFHSC (Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center), which is a biweekly phone conference of the epidemiology chiefs around the world--WRAIR, CHPPM (Center of Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine), USAFSAM (United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine), LRMC (Landstuhl Regional Medical Center), Madigan, Coast Guard, Navy/Marines Medical Command, and some other groups that I didn't catch. Anyway, a lot of time was spent talking about screening blood for Chagas disease (don't ask) before we actually got to the epidemiology part of things. There are a couple of outbreaks/clusters out there, which I found interesting, but we didn't have much time to get into them. And of course, both of the residents who were there had to leave for other meetings before this one was over, leaving me with a bunch of colonels and retired colonels to discuss the cases after the conference.

After the epi chiefs meeting was a quick lunch before I headed back to WRAIR to out-process, which consists of walking around gathering signatures--again--before turning in my badge and driving away. It was very sad, but with any luck, I'll be back here.

One of my friends from Officer Basic, Emily, is in town doing general surgery at WRAMC. Since she's on a surgery rotation, and studying for USMLE Step 2 CS, she's been ridiculously busy, so tonight was the first time she had free for dinner. It was good to see her again and talk about where everyone is applying for residencies. She's hoping to match in general surgery at WRAMC, so maybe we'll get to be interns together next year (and both so stressed we'll still never see each other... such is life).

Interviews and evaluations

Since LTC Cersovsky is going on leave tomorrow, we did my residency interview (part 2?) and rotation evaluations today. The interview was pretty routine stuff... why are you interested in preventive medicine, which program are you ranking (which, technically, they can't ask, but everyone does anyway), do you have any questions for us. The one question I had was, how many people are applying for preliminary preventive medicine interns? There are four positions each year in the Army, two at WRAIR and two at Madigan. The answer? Two that LTC Cersovsky knows of :) That greatly increases my chances of matching at WRAIR and makes me happy.

As far as the evaluations, the whole thing is laughable. It's a standard evaluation form from OSU, which has nothing to do with preventive medicine--most of the questions are in regards to my clinical skills, which, well, doesn't really happen in this rotation. So he just marked "expected level" (which is the highest choice) on each of them. For comments: "Very strong performance. Would be a pleasure to have you train with us in the future." :) That also makes me happy. Now we just wait and see what happens in three months for the military match.