CIR Doctors Prep Med Students for Residency

Think back to the years before you graduated medical school. Did you anticipate the long hours and working conditions of residency? Did you worry that your interests in advocacy and health care reform would be pushed aside by the demands of training? Did you even know that a union for housestaff existed?

Realizing that medical students and residents share a lot of interests, CIR has dedicated a fulltime staff person to working with medical students for the past three years and is increasingly engaging in joint efforts and campaigns with medical student groups. This year, CIR has made a big impression with medical school students across the country.

Working with partners like the American Student Medical Association (AMSA), the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), the National Network of Latin American Medical Students (NNLAMS), and the Students of Osteopathic Medicine Association, CIR has been a reliable presence at dozens of conferences. CIR delegate Dr. Antonio Beltran, a PGY 4 in Internal Medicine at Los Angeles County + USC, is even scheduled to deliver the Keynote Address at the national NNLAMS Conference on March 19, 2009.

CIR leaders and staff take advantage of these conferences, on-campus events, and mixers to interact with the next generation of residents, and to educate students about work hours reform, advocacy to reduce medical school debt, and efforts to tackle disparities in health care for patients from different racial and socio-economic backgrounds – an issue that housestaff working in safety-net hospitals confront every day. Of course, medical students are also filled with questions about what residency is like on a day-today basis.What’s the lifestyle?What programs are easier or harder to get into? How should you strategize during the match? To help answer these questions, CIR has created a Facebook group – “Med School today, Residency tomorrow!” – where residents regularly stop by and answer questions with quick videos or postings on the group wall.

“The presence of CIR residents at AMSA’s events and on our campuses is powerful,” said Dr. Brian Hurley, AMSA’s National President. “It is inspiring to see that beginning a residency doesn't mean an end to being an activist – they are living examples that residents can balance clinical work with participation in the movement for health care reform and improved patient care.” “As an applicant in the match this year," Hurley said, "I have made it a point to interview at CIR hospital programs, so I have high hopes that I’ll have the opportunity to stay involved beginning next year.”