Fellow Physician Contributing Writer
Philippine General Hospital
Dr. Masamayor is diplomate in internal medicine and current endocrinology fellow at Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH).
I was up before dawn, dressed in the comfiest, most adult-looking outfit I owned: a blue-and-white floral blouse, flared maroon pants, and navy walking shoes. After enduring an intense 200-point exam, two grueling weeks of pre-residency (think of it like a two-week job-interview-slash-free-trial), and countless days of calming myself down, it’s time for the real ordeal: my first day of internal medicine residency training.
Third year feels different. Intern year taught me how to work. Every note, every consult, every long night sharpened the mechanics of patient care. You learn to move efficiently, anticipate needs, and steady your hands when everything feels new. It is a year of doing, of survival, of quiet endurance.
It is very difficult to believe that I am already more than halfway done with residency at this point, and that it is time to figure out what I want to do after these three years are up. Once again, what’s surprising and different to me is the structure for training in the United States: having to apply at the end of year 2 for a fellowship that will start after year 3, seems so early, but I am learning to accept that these are the American ways.
In my last installment, I mentioned I would like to write about my process of getting into a residency program in the United States. As soon as I promised this, I remembered the number of steps involved, so please forgive me if I forget to mention something. The path has substantially changed since COVID and differs greatly by individual circumstance. What made the whole process so confusing was having to create multiple accounts and profiles for multiple websites; the next step was often unclear until I called the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) and explicitly asked for instructions.
Let’s start with a very brief introduction: Hello! My name is Aline, and I am an international medical graduate (IMG) from Germany. I used to work in Germany in internal medicine, where I have completed four out of five years of training. I would like to share my experiences, thoughts, and later also some of the processes and steps that got me here over the course of this new column.
You could feel it in the air, in how the nurses double-checked the orders, how the attendings’ notes bloated in size, and even in how the patients, despite their general lack of knowledge towards the inner workings of the hospital, exuded mild apprehension. It was day one of the academic year, the day that the new interns — my new interns — started.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Tufts Medical Center
Arhant Rao is a second-year internal medicine resident at Tufts Medical Center. He has interests in enhancing resident education, improving communication between members of the medical team, and the role of the arts in medicine and medical education. He plans to pursue a career in pulmonary/critical care, and enjoys playing table tennis and practicing piano in his spare time.
