RESIDENT DEVELOPMENT

The emergency physicians of the future need to be varied in their skill set, trained to deliver not only excellent patient care, but to also effectively navigate all areas of their practice and life outside of the hospital. At Vanderbilt Emergency Medicine, our goal is to make you 100% ready to be a great doctor and team member from day one of your first job. Success for us is a medical director who says “this is the best new grad I’ve hired in 10 years.”

How do you get there? The first step is being a great clinician. Above and beyond that at Vanderbilt we will teach you to be a great employee, manager, and leader.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Everyone of our interns is placed into an existing mentorship family, composed of senior residents and a faculty member. At least twice a year you will be asked to create and review an individual plan for learning with your Family Mentor. All of these are carefully reviewed by program leadership who will be constantly asking how we can support you.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

We are actively working to schedule sessions on public speaking and formal leadership training with outside experts. Public speaking is an essential skill for leaders both in formal settings (presentations, didactics) and in informal ones (team debriefs, huddles). Our goal is that each resident will receive targeted coaching in speaking and by the time they are seniors will have crafted a Grand Rounds style talk that they will then present to their peers for feedback. Check back for more on this!

ORANIZATIONAL SKILLS

Your residency family mentor and the leadership team will help you craft a system for organizing your life (calendars, tasks, email management). Different things work for different people. Some of our residents are “paper people” with a physical calendar and others are more into the latest app. We will help you find a system that keeps your organized and on the ball!

SENIOR SEMINAR

Starting in 2021 our program director Dr. Pirotte has created a unique coaching curriculum for our PGY3 residents designed to prepare you for all aspects of being an EM physician that go beyond clinical pratice. We meet about twice a month and talk about real life. Early in the year we focus on crafting detailed cirriculm vitaes, writing high quality cover letters, and digging into the nuts and bolts of finding a job. Later we transition and talk about life as an attending including financial planning, working as an integral part of the medical staff, aligning with your medical director, understanding social determinants of health, navigating malpractice risk, and documenting in such a way as to bill fairly for your services. This is a no-holds-barred seminar series that will have you ready to hit the ground running.

FINDING YOUR DREAM JOB

recent job and fellowship placement

Our team has had almost a decade of experience helping senior residents secure jobs and will be right alongside you at every step of your search – editing your documents, helping you craft emails, coaching you on interview skills, and helping you field multiple offers. In the last few years, Vanderbilt has successfully placed graduates into multiple competitive fellowships, academic positions, and tight markets such as the Pacific Northwest and the research triangle of North Carolina. In an increasingly competitive market, details matter when you are finding your first gig and the entire team will be on your side.

BALANCING WORK AND LIFE

Being a great emergency physician is a balancing act. We also have a series of evening social gatherings at faculty houses called Evolution:MD. Started in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic by then faculty member Carmen Wolfe, these were socially distanced, camp chair discussions about finding passion, balancing decisions, and life outside of the hospital. Importantly, dogs are welcome at these events. We are bringing this back in 2022! Check back for pictures.

Alex Visk
Class of '22

I am a recent Vandy grad now working in a very busy downtown community hospital. From my first shift as an attending, I felt completely prepared to handle whatever medical emergency that was thrown in front of me. Vanderbilt’s program will teach you to master the sickest of patients with world-class teaching… side-by-side with some of the best people you will ever meet. I ranked Vandy my number one residency to become the best emergency doctor that I could be, and I was able to achieve that goal thanks to the elite training at Vanderbilt.