Strategies for Succeeding in Residency Programs: A Program Director’s Perspective

As the classic adage states, residency training in any specialty is a marathon, not a sprint; but what may be a more accurate analogy is that residency training is akin to the physical and psychological preparation before the race even occurs. For any young surgeon, this is arguably the most critical period in their career, since everything subsequent to residency is built upon the foundation of what a trainee ingrains during this initial time spent learning to care for patients both inside and outside of an operating room. The running of the marathon, just like sitting for the Boards and entering the first year of practice, becomes the test of all of the prior days, months, and years of technical practice, cross-training, and mental road-mapping. In this chapter, we seek to describe strategies for success as residents embark on this journey toward becoming independent clinicians and surgeons.