Overview

Although patient care is the principal focus of residency activities, it simultaneously entails expanding the depth of your education and gradually assuming greater professional responsibilities. This chapter will therefore discuss how to maximize learning and how to meet teaching obligations as you move up the house staff ranks. While carrying out their duties, residents frequently must face up to ethical and legal challenges that can impact their performance and themselves. These topics will also be considered in this chapter. Finally, considerations relative to gender, religious views, and life-style and their impact on residency will be discussed.

The resident as a student

Medical school serves to provide prospective interns primarily with the fundamentals of the basic sciences and an introduction to the clinical sciences. In-depth education and training in a specialty, however, are provided only during the course of a residency. Whereas in medical school learning takes place in the classroom and hospital wards, during residency it occurs in hospital wards and in outpatient clinics.

Your clinical experience during the course of a residency will focus on four aspects:

• Learning by observation and participation. This takes place during rounds when diagnoses, treatment plans, patient progress, and prognoses are discussed.

• Learning by performing tasks. This involves carrying out, frequently under supervision, procedures usually relevant to the specialty.

• Learning by listening. This occurs during the course of conferences when medical topics are discussed in depth by attending physicians, visiting specialists, and house staff.

• Learning by self-education. This involves the use of a wide range of resources: texts, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, online Web sites, abstract services, etc.