One down...

Today Michael and I had our first residency interview. We interviewed for spots in PCOM's internal medicine residency. The day started at 7:30am with interviews with the director of clinical education, the residency program director and the chief resident. Everyone was very friendly and the atmosphere was not intense or stressful (thankfully). We were asked the standard questions: What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why should we pick you over everyone else? What is your proudest personal (not medical) accomplishment? We also had an exercise thrown at us by the chief. She made us write admission orders for a fictitious patient. This is not an easy task, especially since we have never written admit orders before (at least not without the help of a cheat sheet or intern), and we had to do it in front of her and the program director. We think the task was meant to see how we respond to a challenge under pressure. I think we both did okay, we have gotten used to the performance under fire scenario.

After the interviews we toured one of their hospitals, Roxborough Memorial. It is a small community hospital very close to our house. We spent some time with an intern and a resident and got their perspective on the program. Everyone seems very happy and says they feel that they are being well educated.

All together the process was positive. We have pros and cons for the program, but it is definitely on our list. We have three more interviews over the next 2 weeks, so we are keeping our minds open until we have made it through them all.

Our next interview is on Monday, so keep us in your prayers for then!