Could Virtual Interviews Help Mitigate Systemic Sexism in Medicine?

Congrats to a few applicants who have already received very early medical school interview invitations. For most, the season will be starting in the next month or so. Virtual interviews through VITA or other platforms will be standard, and how that will affect the admissions process and next year's medical school classes is anyone's guess. My guess is that the virtual interview process will reduce discriminatory practices that have plagued the system for a while. See my Doximity article "How Virtual Interviews Might Mitigate Systemic Sexism in Medicine" and please pass it along. 

My Personal Experience with (What Appears to Have Been) "COVID Fingers"

I usually don’t use this blog to talk about personal issues, but I recently wrote this piece in KevinMD “Why Are COVID Antibodies of Questionable Relevance Being Marketed to the Public” regarding my experience with pseudo-chilblains (burning spots on my fingers – ouch) and my subsequent COVID antibody test. 

Even in the past week since the piece was published, there has been more in the news about the likelihood that T-cell modulated immunity may play an important role in COVID recovery. 

15 ERAS Tips to Boost your Residency Candidacy

 I've started editing ERASes this cycle and have developed this list for guidance:

1. Include relevant pre-professional accomplishments from college. If you conducted research, for example, list and describe it. Do not include high school achievements unless they were truly unique (worked at the White House, sang on Broadway, published in Nature).

2. While you want to include many strong achievements, you do not want your ERAS to be so long that your reader is tempted to skim it, so avoid small activities (like an afternoon health fair). 

3. Keep your descriptors to approximately five to seven sentences. Fewer can look lazy and more can look self-indulgent.

4. Use full sentences. It’s a formal application, and you want to make your written materials as readable as possible.

5. Avoid abbreviations. Ones you think are common might not be familiar to the reader.

6. Avoid contractions; they are too informal for your ERAS. 

7. Make sure you spell out your accomplishments clearly. If your reader doesn’t understand an activity, you won't get “full credit” for what you’ve done. Make no assumptions - not even that the reader has reviewed the experience's introductory information (location, name of activity). 

8. Write about yourself and your role – not an organization. For example, don’t use the space to discuss Physicians without Borders. Use it to discuss the specifics of your role at Physicians without Borders.

9. Use numbers to be persuasive. Saying that the conference you organized had 300 participants says it all.

10. Unless your PI won the Nobel, avoid using supervisors' and/or doctors' names in your descriptors as they will be meaningless to the majority of your readers.

11. Do your best not to leave the "Medical School Awards" section blank. Even if you have to simply include clerkships in which you obtained honors (or high honors), fill that section out.

12. If you have not already, consider joining your specialty's national organization and listing it under the "Membership in Honorary/Professional Societies" section. If you are applying in two fields, take this advice, though. 

13. Try to end your entries with a sentence about how the experience you just described will help you as a future specialist. Making that connection for the reader furthers your candidacy. 

14. As with all good writing, avoid redundant language. Having the word "research" three times in two lines is distracting and demonstrates a lack of originality. 

15. Get help. Don't submit your residency application without having it reviewed by someone with a lot of experience. You do not want to put forward suboptimal materials for a process that is this important and competitive.

No, I Can't Fix Your Computer

My husband spotted a man wearing a t-shirt with that saying on it, and we have ever since jokingly referred to it when someone in the house is having a tech problem. 

As we all probably know, there is usually someone in the extended family who is the "computer person." 

Well, we could use that individual now. While I am a big fan of the virtual interview for medical school and residency (see my upcoming Doximity article on the topic), I do worry about technical glitches. A client recently wrote me that her asynchronous, recorded virtual medical school interview had a problem, leaving her with one question unanswerable. (I counseled her to inform the school.) I'm crossing my fingers that this is an anomaly and not a reflection of what's to come this cycle.

As always, make sure to practice for your interviews; you wouldn't go into a standardized test without a lot of preparation, and the same should be true for interviews. 

Contact me here for help. 

The Virtual Medical School Interview: What to Expect when You're Expecting... An Unconventional Format

In the late spring, to its credit, the Association of American Medical Colleges® (AAMC) recommended that all medical school, residency, and fellowship interviews be done virtually this cycle. Formats may vary, but interviews should not be in-person.

One configuration that seems to be emerging for medical schools (at least) is a two-part model: asynchronous and synchronous. The former involves a recorded session in which a computer platform - without a live interviewer present - provides questions to applicants who then have a set time to record their answers. The synchronous session is a live, remote interview.

The advantage of virtual interviews - beyond obvious health benefits and cost containment - is a standardization of the process, but mastering the new, remote processes may be difficult and anxiety-producing. 

To get help with this new world of virtual interviews, contact me.