Medical fellowships are necessary steps in gaining the health knowledge that you need, but sometimes mentors and older doctors have antiquated notions of how to run a practice that can make life a chore. Reliance on pens and paper, easily lost and more easily damaged, dependence on old equipment, and distrust of online medical information and apps can make being a young medical fellow a difficult time. However, there are things that you can do to bring your medical fellowship into the twenty-first century starting as soon as today and get the most out of your residency.
Find the Right Residency
Listen to other medical residents and make sure that you are entering an atmosphere that is right for you and one where you can grow and change and become the best to practice medicine that you can be.
Digitize Your Documents
If you have notes, prescriptions, or any other small pieces of paper that can easily be lost, then consider either digitizing your notes to begin with or scan your notes so that you have digital copies as well. This can be easy to share with mentors, superiors, pharmacies, and even patients if need be. Furthermore, if you have the uniquely difficult to read handwriting, then some apps will even turn your handwriting into text so that it can be more easily interpreted. This is also helpful for turning in or looking back on any notes on cases that you took as a medical fellow so that you can use it in later research, theses, and other works. This step can be as easy as scanning your documents with any note-taking app on your phone and is an easy way to feel like a modern doctor.
Understand the Technology Around You
Understanding the new equipment that is being tested and put into the market every day is a good way to stay up to speed and keep your medical residency up to date and up to standard on things. That way, you can treat your patients with the best and newest possible care. Further understanding of the Internet of Things and how it relates and challenges the healthcare industry will make you a forward thinker not just in your practice, but also in your field. Adapting with technology will encourage you to think of technology in a new way and be an innovator in your field as well.
Change How You View the Fellowship
While you can modernize things and systems, another thing you can modernize is yourself as well.
- Analyze the field in a new way, maybe researching another area or talking to someone else in your practice to refresh your perspective
- Recognize that your own health is worth protecting, both in your actions and with things like disability insurance for medical residents.
- Work with new staff and get perspective from patients
Keeping all of this in mind is a good way to keep the way you view your medical residency in a positive light. Medical residencies can either solidify your passion or make you jaded, so make sure that you fall more and more in love with what you do as you go along.
Work With People, Not Against Them
Whether this means working with patients or working with staff members that you don?t like, you can grow so much as a person by learning to work with people instead of deliberately working against them or refuting everything that you say. Further, you can often learn something out of talking to people with whom you disagree, even if that seems painful. That is growth. That is a valuable lesson to learn for life in general both within and outside of residency. Working with even the most difficult patients can make it easier once you leave residency as well.
Enjoy Residency While It Lasts
These may seem like they are going to last forever, but these days will soon be behind you and you will miss it. In the meantime, enjoy being a resident. This knowledge will serve you well both now and in the future. This experience is invaluable in the medical field and you are bound to make some incredible friends within the profession. Remember these days and bring these days into the present now, enjoying them while they last. Being a medical resident is never easy, but it always pays off in the end. Even on your worst days, remember that what you are doing today can help you help save someone?s life tomorrow.