The Match: Getting into a Residency Program is Only the Beginning!
There are a lot of memories of my own Match Day. Friends. Future. Potential. Unknowns. Adventure. Seriousness. Life Beginning... Finally. All those 'important' memories and yet, 20 years later one image stands permanent. It is of seeing my reflection in the whitish nearly opaque glass wall of a patient's room on Learner Tower in Cleveland, OH. Ethereal almost. I'm standing in a short white coat, listening to the resident speak, and for one moment, deep in the glass reflection, I see myself in a long white coat. A silly thing to remember. I know this now. Yet, permanent. Perhaps, because I lost the career I loved eleven years later when I loss the good use of my left hand that memory is cement. It now represents both the future of that moment and the past of my medical career.
Working one on one and doctor to doctor with more young physicians this year than ever before, there is a truth in that memory that we, graduating medical students, are all very well trained to be physicians. The future of the long white coat is certain on Match Day. I worked so very hard to get there. You worked so very hard. Congratulations!
Your memories will be much like mine this Friday. Your time remaining as a medical student will fade quickly beginning Monday. I speak and write about disability insurance (and you should explore that as soon as you can), basic financial literacy for the physician and work/life balance in the 21st century medical professional.
My advice to you - your 21st century careers in medicine will be different than your 20th century counterparts. The one truth I know is that financial protection and financial security for the 21st century practicing physician will reduce stress, anxiety and burnout in your careers. For all the technology you will see, use and develop to improve the lives of others, or cure their diseases... it is your own life that if you do not 'attend' to properly will end up causing the most pain and suffering.
I educate, advise and advocate for today's young doctors to properly protect their career physician's income, have a strategy and robust plan for educational debt elimination and understand that work/life balance does not just happen, it requires some thought, some preparation and some reflection.
~Chris
Dr. Christopher Yerington
Columbus, Ohio
Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, medical colleagues and community. He speaks, writes and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability and life insurance, basic physician-financial literacy and work-life balance. Chris also consoles and counsels young doctors on stress, burnout and physician-suicide. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student of human life, a scientist and an optimistic futurist at heart.