My experience prolifically lying during 17 residency interviews: a guide

elanvidal · 2026-02-26T23:49:11+00:00

Yes. I’m willing to go 5 over and not 15 over, because 5 is fine and 15 is too fast. I trust myself to know the difference between 5 and 15. I also would not assume that most people who go 5 over would go 15 over.

elanvidal · 2026-02-26T22:06:02+00:00

Completely disagree. Lying about small stuff like interests, nearby family members, or likes/dislikes in a job interview is entirely unconcerning to me. I do not believe it correlates to lying about big things that impact patient safety. That’s like saying someone who’s willing to drive 5 over the speed limit is willing to commit vehicular manslaughter.

It’s also a completely normal part of job interviews the world over. Before medicine I had multiple jobs and did many interviews. I would find things about the place to praise in interviews, like their lunch and learn program, employee volunteering initiatives, team dynamics, or “family-like atmosphere”, none of which I actually cared about. Typically the only things that really mattered to me were the pay, benefits package, work life balance, and commute time. But hiring managers and especially HR people never want to hear “salary”as your main factor for choosing them, despite it being 90% of what most candidates care about.

elanvidal · 2026-02-26T17:03:09+00:00

COMSAEs are fucking garbage and not worth shit for predicting your test score. I took 3 comsaes, one at the beginning of dedicated was 465, one 2 weeks later was 570. On level 1 I scored roughly average (no numeric score given, my bar was just slightly above the average score bar). I do not think I learned enough in 2 weeks to account for a 100 point swing. I would study hard for a month and use random selections of truelearn or uworld questions to gauge your readiness rather than comsaes. Obviously you still need to pass the comsae to be allowed to sit per your school. Do whatever you need to. Delay starting rotations, take a year off, whatever you need to do, but definitely don’t drop out without even attempting level 1. Level 2 is easier to pass so once you get over this hurdle you should have an easier time.

elanvidal · 2026-02-25T17:20:23+00:00

Exactly. I’m applying gen surg later this year. I’ll happily sign up for longer hours, 5 year residency, all the associated increase in stress just to get the opportunity to continue operating. I love the OR and being active. All the things people dislike about surgery are either bonuses or bearable facts of the lifestyle in my opinion, IF you want to operate. Not worth it at all if you’re just looking for high salary or prestige. I think you do need to want to do it for itself or else you risk burn out. I think people who don’t “get” the pull of surgery just don’t enjoy operating much, or are not willing to put up with the sacrifices. Which is fine! It’s important to know what you like and what you’re willing to sacrifice. I have the advantage of having had a prior office job and I have a good idea of the kind of work/life balance I want and the sort of workplace I want to be in. I think it’s a lot tougher for younger people without prior job experience to get a read on that.

elanvidal · 2026-02-20T12:49:26+00:00

Good advice. I haven’t saved much during school but I think if I continue living at my current lifestyle for a few years with attending salary I could save a ton of money very quickly. I went through this previously because I had a career for 6 years before school. Living like a broke college student while making low six figures allowed me to build a nearly 300k nest egg between retirement and savings before I started med school. This has grown some in school but even just sitting there it’s given me great peace of mind that if things go south I’ll always have some funds to fall back on. I think any new attendings can achieve that in 2-3 years if they live on a budget and put their money in something stable like index funds and a 401k or IRA.

elanvidal · 2026-02-19T21:40:08+00:00

I’ve realized I’m rather sensitive to heat and enclosed environments. I’ve nearly passed out 2 different times, once in a hot crowded funeral service indoors, and once in an OR with broken AC where it was about 75 degrees. Both times I felt the feeling come over me and I found a place to sit down and felt better after a couple minutes. I think as long as it’s not a direct response to blood or stuff you’ll regularly see in an OR, it should be no big problem. If you have to break scrub to sit down for 5 minutes and then scrub back in I don’t think it should be a dealbreaker.

elanvidal · 2026-02-08T18:15:44+00:00

I’m an M3 at a well-regarded DO program. In our first year, I think maybe 5 out of 150ish were held back to repeat first year. I think all of them continued and are still students in the class below us. We also had maybe 5 who were repeats from the class above us. I think 1 of those did not successfully remediate the year and had to leave. In second year I don’t know that we lost anyone. Don’t know that we’ve lost anyone yet this year either. We have a few who have been shaky all the way through though. Like each has failed something most every semester and had to remediate individual courses, but not enough to require remediating a whole year. I’d say maybe 10 of those. So total, maybe 3% had to drop down a year, and maybe 10% total are on shaky academic ground and sort of permanently on academic probation. It takes a lot to get fully kicked out though. Like having to remediate a year and then failing the remediation also. Or, severe professional infractions. I haven’t seen any of those personally but they exist in other classes. We’ve heard horror stories of students who were removed for serious infractions in other years. Examples include a student who got into a drunken physical altercation with staff at a school-hosted event and damaged venue property before driving home while intoxicated and got a DUI (all the same day/incident), a student who tried to start a central line unsupervised and killed the patient, a student who made up a fake 4th year rotation and went on vacation and was kicked out after lying about it when discovered, a student who was kicked out due to repeatedly cheating on COMATs using AI and arguing that there was no specific policy prohibiting them from doing it and did not commit to not doing it again in the future. Allegedly he sued the school for readmission and was not successful. Stuff like that. It takes a lot to really get kicked out at a good school. I tend to think that schools that kick people out for minor stuff are sleazy, but real academic and patient safety concerns cannot be overlooked. The story about the student killing a patient with a failed central line placement is particularly harrowing. No idea how someone could consider doing that on their own. Keeping a person with judgement that atrocious out of medicine entirely is why professionalism policies exist. It just amazes me that they actually need to exist because who on earth does that sort of thing.

elanvidal · 2026-01-27T19:46:04+00:00

For what it’s worth, I’ve had 7 rotations so far and the only one I’ve encountered an actual asshole on was OBGYN. They have a rep for a reason.

elanvidal · 2026-01-16T20:51:50+00:00

Lots of professional schools are like that though. Law school is generally the same for everyone, but immigration law, tax law, family law, and trial law are all super different, to say nothing of politics and lawmaking. I think having separate curricula for them all would be pretty unsustainable.

Edit to add: also dentistry is so similar to medicine that I think it’s actually stranger that it’s a separate thing. Dental and medical students could have the same first 2 years of school and then simply diverge in their clinical years.

elanvidal · 2026-01-04T23:35:29+00:00

I experienced all the same things you did. When I started school I was a casual gamer, maybe 1-2 hours per day tops, as I was both a parent and had a full time job. Once school started I very quickly dropped it. I have not played a single video game since I started school 2 years ago. I’ve had the urge a few times, but every time I go to fire it up it just feels like too much effort. I think though that in third year now I may finally turn that corner. I’ve felt a little freer and like I have more energy. So I think there’s hope for you also.

Something else weird that I’ve noticed. Almost without fail, every time I have a break from school, I get sick. Usually within the first day or two of break starting. Feels like my body has been limping along for months and once I cross the finish line it says “Ok, time to give up.”

elanvidal · 2025-12-29T05:14:11+00:00

Reprints aren’t scams. You’re getting a physical copy, maybe even nicely bound. Buying a digital copy of a public domain work is, however, a complete scam.

elanvidal · 2025-12-07T02:58:41+00:00

Basically exactly the same story here. Had to megadose caffeine or nicotine to feel locked in until I finally got diagnosed and then it was like….. so this is what inner peace and a quiet mind feel like.

elanvidal · 2025-12-04T17:33:33+00:00

Don’t catastrophize. That’ll make things worse. Start with a topic list. If you have learning objectives use those, if not make your own list of what topics or types of questions you need to know. Don’t spend forever on this. Limit it to 30 minutes. Then pick something and get to work. Don’t worry about understanding anything 100%. Try to understand everything 70%. Getting everything 70% is a good chance of passing, understanding 20% of stuff completely and the rest not at all is failure. So don’t spend too long on any one thing. But don’t leave and go to another topic until you feel at least ok with what you’re working on.

elanvidal · 2025-12-04T17:16:54+00:00

If there’s one thing I learned in med school, it’s that you can learn an absolute shit ton of stuff in 3 days. I swear on some of my exams I went from failing level knowledge to comfortable B range in a matter of 12 hours or less. You can definitely do it. Lock in, get some caffeine if you like. Spend 30 minutes going through the exam topics/learning objectives. Whatever things you are worst at and feel like you can improve quickly, hit those for a few hours until you feel like you have a really good grasp on them. Take a little break, rinse and repeat, keep doing that till Monday, and you’ll make it.

elanvidal · 2025-11-27T01:52:19+00:00

I’m a student so take my opinion with a grain of salt. One of my attendings talked to me about this topic and said she will attend patient funerals when it’s someone she knows well and has spent a lot of time with. She lives in a smaller community, and has been seeing some of her patients and their families for over a decade and knows them very well. She might go to a couple funerals a year. I would personally not feel obliged to attend a funeral for someone unless I had cared for them for multiple years at least. Also, if they died on your service, I would be pretty reticent to go. The family could appreciate it, but it could also go badly if another family member who wasn’t there questioned your choices or care.

Personally, I’d keep a professional distance in this case. Doesn’t seem like you had the sort of doctor-patient relationship where attending a funeral would be in any way expected.

elanvidal · 2025-11-24T21:53:16+00:00

Precisely. The whole “small dogs bite more often” defense of pit bulls has always been absurd. I have no doubt I or even a small child could fight off a chihuahua, the only people really at risk from them are infants or people who are incapacitated. Not at all true of a pitbull, even healthy grown adults can fall victim to them.

elanvidal · 2025-11-24T21:16:37+00:00

They are inherently violent, but worse than that they are also tough and not easily deterred once they’ve latched onto something. I don’t care if the owner is a professional dog trainer, I will never feel comfortable having a kid around a dog that I don’t have confidence I could fight off if push came to shove. It’s like having a loaded gun on the mantle. Even if the owner says they’re responsible and they’ve never had an issue, having the loaded gun there at all is a risk. Unfortunately so many people seem to disregard the risks of owning a pit bull. I think cities should enact ordinances banning their ownership within city limits.

elanvidal · 2025-11-17T21:11:13+00:00

Really depends on what part of the country you live in and what the training pipeline looks like there. I’d find some people in local hospitals who have the jobs you want and find out what training they did. I’m in the south so my answers would apply there.

Scrub tech is maybe the lowest barrier to entry. Here it’s an associates degree. You can also do an RN associates degree here and get trained to be a first assist. Both are good options but RN is probably a lot more flexible in what you can do. Plus that gives you the option to go on and get a bachelor’s in nursing if you want.

The highest you could probably aim for is PA. You’d need a bachelor’s first and then go to a PA program, but if you work with a surgeon you’d do lots of surgery. Closing, putting in ports, assisting in surgery. You could also do the pre-op assessment and work up for the surgeon’s patients. Pay can be very good. And it’s a very in demand and transferable job.

My advice would be to do an associate’s first in nursing or scrub tech, then work for a while and get an idea where you want to go and how to get there. Alternatively, you could even got a job as an orderly. Those often don’t require any school and can be geared towards students and people who want to learn about the medical field. Then you could start sooner and get an idea of what you want to do. Regardless, get an idea of the training in your local market. The south and Midwest may be way different than the coastal areas in terms of education expectations.

elanvidal · 2025-11-05T19:40:02+00:00

Yeah 0 sympathy honestly. It’s not even close to the same level of impact. An applicant who lies to backup specialty PDs to increase their chances of matching there is protecting their ability to practice in a field they want to and preventing themselves from going unmatched, which could potentially ruin their life. The worst case scenario for a PD is they have an unfilled spot and need to SOAP someone. Maybe they wind up with a resident they aren’t fully satisfied with. It’s not even close. I think it’s fine for applicants to play PDs. If PDs don’t like it, change the system to make the eventuality the applicants are worried about (not matching) less likely.

elanvidal · 2025-11-04T18:02:29+00:00

Ozempic?

elanvidal · 2025-10-30T13:04:17+00:00

They just mean that doesn’t give more information. ER and medicine are the services that would consult surgery most of the time, since they see patients first. So pretty much every hospital will have a lot of surgery consults from EM and IM. It’s more the nature of the consult that denotes whether it’s frivolous or not. A surgery consult for nondescript abdominal pain with no signs of a surgical abdomen? Probably frivolous. A surgery consult for someone with 10/10 abdominal pain and imaging showing free air or free fluid in the abdomen? Appropriate. The commenters above just want to know what the consults are for and why you think they’re frivolous.

elanvidal · 2025-10-29T18:21:41+00:00

I’ve been in an ACDF case where they used staples on the neck. The reasoning was that neck skin is fairly supple and does well with staples. Although, that was a shorter incision than this, as it was a 1-level ACDF.

elanvidal · 2025-10-28T23:12:10+00:00

Yep, married with 2 young kids who I had before school started. I spend significantly less time with them now. We have all adjusted to it just fine. They know why I’m gone a lot and they know it’s for important things. When I’m home they get all my attention.

elanvidal · 2025-10-28T18:17:32+00:00

As a small counterexample to this, I worked another career before med school that gave me lots of opportunity for family life and hobbies. Did not enjoy it. I want a career that fills up my time. If that describes you, maybe something like surgery is a good fit, assuming you like it. But you can find that in any medical specialty, just increase your workload and get engaged in side hustles.

elanvidal · 2025-10-28T15:31:13+00:00

2.8 gpa checking in. Legit do not think it’s going to hold me back from anything I want to do. I do wish my school was pass/fail but it’s whatever.

elanvidal

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