 Hey guys, welcome back to channel and today we are going to talk about how to pick the best residency program for you. Let's get into it. So as the making of this video, we're at that time where a fourth year medical students are getting ready to submit their residency applications. Now with that comes a lot of nervousness and this video I'm going to break down kind of what type of things you should be considering regardless if you're applying this cycle or upcoming as well as giving you a really cool tool. So make sure you stay with that to know and being able to rank which program is going to be the best fit for you ultimately. So the first thing I recommend you do before you even start to look at the programs you're interested in is to really come up with your initial priority list to really understand the best place for you to go. You have to understand the things that are most valuable to you and some of these things include things like locations or geography like what part of the country or the world are you okay with practicing in as well as things like how variable can you be with your salary? Are you okay with the lower salary for a place that's more desirable or do you want your salary because you have kids or somebody who's depending on you and other things that we'll get into in this video include some of the minutiae of a national program like how is it structured is it designed in a way where you're going to be able to perform well still have that nice work-life balance ideally as well as things like can you obtain enough things like mentorship or career opportunities so eventually when you leave residency you're set up for success. So I encourage you for those five things whether it be salary, geography, structure of a program, career mentorship opportunities as well as your overall fit within a program prioritize which one would be the most valuable to you and then promise you will get back to it because that tool is going to be able to help rank you on which program is going to be the best fit for you. Now the next thing we need to talk about is how you look at programs in the first place. Yes there's going to be some programs in your geographic vicinity that you're going to be well aware of or some programs that have high prestige that you also be aware of but maybe there is a golden program for you out there that you just have never heard of in your life and it's plus that you actually meet yourself aware so how do you do that? So there's three to four different places that I recommend to kind of do your research one of them is Frida which is a resource that's provided by the AMA now it's not free so you do have to pay for it but it's basically an entire database of all of the residency programs out there and the various specialties and it's really dependent on how well a residency program does to keep up with their information on Frida but it's essentially a database so you'll be able to look up on things like salaries, structures, you know the different hospitals that they work at as well as other information that that program thought it would be important for you to know and it is a paid service I encourage you at the end of your third year to start of your fourth year to sign up for Frida and use the database to really come up with a master list of all the programs that seem interesting to you and then you can also look at some of the other resources to give you a better fit of which one's going to be the best fit for you. Now the next way that I would recommend to research residency programs is to use Doximity. Now let me just kind of give you an insight look. If you're not familiar with Doximity it's a great website for both medical students as well as actual providers and so if you have some kind of EDU website associated with your institution you can create an account. So this is the one I have and they actually have within their tool section amongst various other things a residency navigator. And so you can use this to research the various different fields that you're in so if I'm going into general medicine like I am then I can look at the various different types of programs and you can do it based off of various different criteria. So things like reputation will keep in mind that that's a little bit subjective but they actually do a pretty good job here at telling you which one is the best programs here but then you can also do things like location which is what I did. So for example I wanted to stay in the state of Texas and so I was able to see not only the programs I was aware of as well as some of the smaller community programs I wasn't aware of but may have been a better fit for me just because it was in the nice location. And so if you click on any program so we'll just click on the one here at Austin because that's where I was from. You can get an idea of basically how their year is structured depending on the various different hospitals that they work at as well as what kind of fellowship programs that they have at that residency program in case you're interested in staying. And most importantly you can also get an idea of what current as well as past alumni's can get in terms of feedback of what they thought of the individual program. And then finally you can get other important values such as like the median home value if you're trying to buy a house and residency or as well as things like how much rent will be which this is actually a little bit cheaper than what is in Austin so just keep in mind because I've lived there in my life these may all not be completely accurate but it is a kind of information to start and you can use this to store it with that important tool which we'll talk about in just a second. And then lastly you can look at the information of the people like the program coordinators as well as the program directors and then have a good idea as well as be able to click on their individual websites and then be able to read more about the individual program. And that gets us in the last way of really knowing about a program once you kind of have your database of what programs you're interested in then you can kind of create an excel sheet which I'll kind of show you in a second but you can go into the website to one understand what that program values as well as understanding who and that program is considered to be somebody who's kind of higher up including their chief residence and then also kind of understanding the curriculum and other kind of the details that would be important to you. So that gets me into the tool that you can use to really understand if a program is for you now this is basically an excel sheet that I've created that's absolutely free I'll link it down below it's going to be within the med vault so that's a collection of free resources that I've created throughout the past few years for medical students so now only we have access to this spreadsheet as I updated as well as other resources that I've added as well as continue down in the future I'll be linked down below all you have to do is just sign up with your email but basically what you can do is as you're going through your programs as whether it be through your research or after you're going through interviews you can always come back to it you can add your list of programs here and hopefully you guys enjoy some of the names that I placed but the most important thing is like I mentioned understand your priorities of the things like locations, salaries, structure and mentorship, community and like fit and basically give it a score and here in this example just to make the math simple I ask that you score it from a one to ten and you can basically ask okay like what's the most important thing for me for me and residency it was like the location I was in because I wanted to be close to my family and make sure that my wife who we were newly married didn't have to like move across the country after leaving her family and so location was huge salary was important but like not the biggest thing on my list and then things like mentorship opportunities were important but also not the highest thing on my list and you can add more things or replace some of the things but basically what we'll do is then now when you go into an individual program and you give it a grade like md journey university for example may have a location of a 10 versus smash that like button may only have a three and once you start adding your various scores through your research you'll essentially be able to get a final score that is weighted by how you ranked these various things so just because something has a 10 multiple times like here for example it may still be ranked at your bottom program just because the thing that you value the most is going to have a least score so this is just a very kind of geeky way for me to use excel to help you kind of rank your various kind of residency programs in and again you can do this on the research phase and then come back and after you go through the interview phase and the programs you do interview at you can add your notes and then update your scores and so this will ideally be a useful tool for you guys as you're getting closer to kind of putting your rank list for match and if you guys are interested in learning how the match process works i've made a video step by step on exactly how to do that you guys can check that out below over there as well as down below the description now once you've actually ranked your individual priorities as well as research programs then classify them according to your priorities a few things that are important to actually kind of find your best residency program like i feel like i personally have one thing that i would remember is understanding that fit is super important yes location is important yes always important but honestly if there is a program where you are going to be a better fit and it's just going to be like a family camaraderie situation your three years of residency you're going to feel like you're around friends all the time versus colleagues and people that you just have to work with there's a big difference coming to work with people that you actually enjoy i love my colleagues i love my residents my intern my second years as well as my tendings and fellows and so i feel like work is a place that doesn't always feel like work i mean it feels like a place so we're all kind of growing and learning and having challenges together that fit is super important so on your interview day on your residencies on the actual webpage try to understand if the values of that program the values of the people there fit with the things that you also value next also remember that balance is super key going to a program of two equal calibers but one does a better job of prioritizing your kind of wellness whether it be giving you more days off or not making you work ridiculous hours or giving you a nice balance between things like icu or busy surgery hours keep all of that in mind because again they're two equally caliber programs in terms of training job opportunities vocation you may want to pick the one that gives you the better lifestyle balance and sometimes the best way to know this is to actually talk to the individual residents there and so again you can look at the reviews and things like proximity as well as when you're on your residency trail ask them like would you have picked this program again how happy are you how well is your life work balance and people that are actually truly honest will give you a good picture of what that means and then you can take their feedback and add those to your notes on that excel sheet that again will be linked down below to really understand okay is this a program that is going to fit with my values and my free time and desires and then finally understand that your training most of all is the most important thing if you're going to go through X amount of years of residence you want to make sure that you become the best physician possible and not just like below average your average and so that was the thing for me when i ranked them yes location was super important but i want to become the best damn doctor possible in three years because i had to do residency anyways i want as well become the best version of myself and so that's why i looked at programs that were at equal calibers and then asked myself okay like these programs of here i'd feel like i'd get great training at now which one ranks better into his location and salary and fit but i started not to really look at programs that didn't actually give me that ability to become a great physician and so while it may seem enticing of saying oh this program offers a better salary or has a better location or has a really push or chill schedule you may want to say okay like is that really what i want do i want three easy years to kind of not have the best training and become a less adequate physician again all residency programs will train you but they may not all train equally well so keep that in line you want to have the best training first and then prioritize the rest of the things that we talked about earlier in this video but that guys is basically how i recommend step by step on how to choose the best residence program for you whether it comes to prioritizing your values first putting the programs and how to do the research and then finally you can use tools like that excel sheet like once you've gotten your subjective of what matters to you out of the way then you can just start putting numbers in to really get a hone of like okay in reality that's the best program for me based off what i think to be important and you don't have to feel like you're torn because then you can just say like okay like that one's number one and that one's clearly number seven while it may feel like it's a close tie this one clearly has the best of the things that i value so hopefully guys this video helped you out and picking the best residency program for you if you guys have any more questions you know where to find me drop your comments down below DM me on instagram send me an email at mbturney.com at tmo.com I'd be happy to answer your questions or make for each of your videos about that and on that note if you do want a personalized answer to your question if you look in the links in below in the description you'll find a q and a link it'll be a survey basically if you use that survey and you drop your name email you basically can ask me a question i will send you a video reply to your individual question and if it's helpful to other people i'll also share here on youtube so other people can benefit from your question and if you're watching this video and you're still pretty early on the process before you get a residency and you want to increase the chances of getting into that dream residency always wished of check out some of the programs that we have down below for you as well as free ones like med vault as well as some of the step-by-step programs like the med school domination bundle or things like the crushing clinicals program if you're later on in any rotations if you have any questions about any of the programs or any of the videos or any of the things regarding residency drop them in the comment section before you click off this video go and hit that like button down below helps the video out helps the channel out also gets this video out in front of more people so super super grateful if you do so and if you're new to this channel or if you've just been lurking around consider hitting that subscribe button as well as notification bell to be informed when new videos just like this one without life but with that being said guys thank you so much for watching this video again if you want access to that excel sheet will be linked down below absolutely free but until then guys if you did enjoy this video check out this video on how you can use onky like a pro to help you in your medical school journey as well as this kind of playlist right here to help you on your whole residency pathway and as always thank you for being a part of my journey hopefully how's a little help to you guys and yours and i'll see you guys in the next one peace my friends