[Jennifer Duane]

Amy- I’m glad you asked this! We do use filters for letters. We require 3 letters and, after our stated deadline, we consider applications with less than 3 letters to be incomplete and we don’t send them to faculty to review. But since I saw your question and recognized we had a short turnaround time this year, our PD did take a look at all the applications that had been labeled as “incomplete” to make sure we didn’t miss anyone.

[Jennifer Duane]

Our residents created an Instagram and Twitter account which they manage. I believe it’s just 1 resident who handles all the posts.
We created a LinkedIn account for alums several years ago and I’m supposed to manage that with a couple other alums, but we haven’t been very good at keeping up with it.

[Jennifer Duane]

Our residents created an Instagram and Twitter account which they manage. I believe it’s just 1 resident who handles all the posts.
We created a LinkedIn account for alums several years ago and I’m supposed to manage that with a couple other alums, but we haven’t been very good at keeping up with it.

[Jennifer Duane]

Hi Artina and Community,

In my program, most if not all elective surgeries are being cancelled. In terms of resident staffing, we are telling residents to stay home and do their best to stay healthy when they are not in surgery. These residents are “on reserve” so they can replace residents who become ill. We are a 4-hospital program so the ortho team at each hospital is creating its own staffing plan. I know that at least one of our teams is planning to rotate residents on/off trauma on a 2-week schedule to give the trauma residents a break and avoid long-term COVID-19 exposure.

Our hospital policies state that anyone with fever, sore throat, cough, or nasal congestion should stay/go home and report symptoms to Occ Health for further guidance regarding return to work. We are taking this very seriously which means residents who have just 1 of these symptoms need to stay/go home and follow occ health’s directions based on symptom review. So it is extra important to have a back-up system.

Right now, our focus is on contingency planning and adapting to the constantly evolving situation. These are definitely intense times, especially in healthcare.

I hope that is helpful! Take care everyone

[Jennifer Duane]

Hi Everyone.
If you are unable to attend the ARCOS meeting, please make sure to send your cancellation email to ARCOSOnlineInfo@gmail.com.
While it is helpful to share information among programs in this forum, posting here does not constitute an official cancellation. I am monitoring the gmail account for cancellations but am not monitoring this forum.

[Jennifer Duane]

I got it!

[Jennifer Duane]

HI Renee, I’m sharing our resident stipend policy here.
Outside of the stipend, the residency buys loupes for each resident but we have a payback system where we ask them to re-pay us for the loupes 2 years after they graduate. Like you, if someone is doing a podium presentation of original research, that travel is funded through the department where the research was based (we are 4 hospitals).

Of note, we only recently added the $2,600 contribution after 4th year. That was originally specifically dedicated (program support outside of the stipend) for PGY-5 residents’ attending a Board review course. But we found they weren’t all attending the course, so we decided to just let them do what they want with that money instead of reserving it specifically for a Board Review.

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[Jennifer Duane]

Hi Maria – I apologize I forgot to respond to this sooner, but we did implement a alumni survey of the residency and a fellowship director evaluation of our graduates last year. I’ll upload both of them.
If anyone thinks they look familiar, I borrowed content from other programs as I had asked the same question a few years ago.

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[Jennifer Duane]

Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to the conversation! It’s so helpful to learn what others do and how you fit even more candidates into a day. It’s definitely food for thought as we figure out if we want to change what we’re doing.

To answer Vicky’s question about help with the interview days – our residency has a staff of 2 to begin with – Kaitlin Duffy and me. So we oversee the timing of some of the 10-min interview rooms while also managing the logistics of the day to ensure all goes smoothly. We seek out 2-3 administrative assistants to help with ushering applicants to some of the interview rooms and timing those rooms. Then we ask for 2 residents to lead the hospital tours and go on the trolley tours. Sometimes we have just 1 resident, sometimes a couple extra are available.

[Jennifer Duane]

Hi Tammy – yes, we’ve been offering this at Harvard for a while. It is not a track that residents have to match into. Ideally they decide to do it after their PGY-3 year (but some have done it after PGY-4). Some have taken 2 years off, some just 1. One of our PhD faculty has a T32 grant that has helped to support these residents during their research year (although some have had to identify other funding sources when the T32 wasn’t available). They often moonlight to supplement their income also.
As far as the regulatory bodies (ABOS, ACGME) are concerned, there is no problem with extending their training in this manner (though someone with a visa would run into problems). We’ve had some problems with hospital credentialing recognizing them as clinical trainees when they are not on the residency schedule, but that’s a local issue.
Logistically, it is tricky because it means adjusting the rotation schedules to accommodate the fluctuating number of residents each year. If you want to chat in more detail about our experience with this feel free to contact me directly!

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