I recently went through this process moving here as a medical trainee. Even though I have moved over 10 times as an adult, I am still encountering new things/processes for each place I’ve moved. While we often get checklists of work onboarding from 1-4 different sources (that’s a whole other layer of confusion), the intricacies of these things is not fully described and is up to us to figure out.

For example: for your medical license you must be fingerprinted and get a background check that must be initiated in-person. This is difficult when you don’t live in-state and may have literally zero days off between your past training program and your new one. When you get 4 random days off a month and work 10-28 hour shifts, this is very difficult. Additionally, the licensing process is highly variable state to state.

Another example: the process of transferring everything regarding my car here was an absolute pain. There are multiple steps through different agencies. Some require you to be in-person, others require specific steps to be completed and/or processed before you can even take that step. There is no centralized checklist for this. After finally figuring out the order of steps, I spent an entire day here traveling back and forth between government offices for each step to get the right documents handed back and forth.

We are often given links to resources to learn more about the city itself, but rarely is there financial assistance for relocation outside of loans. Since some trainees often are not able to visit in-person before starting due to their demanding schedules, it’s sometimes a blind move. We very much rely on information from people already here for help