Residency...and medical students.

I am now in my residency.  It is hard to wrap my head around the concept that I am now a PGY-2.  The students, truth be told, are kind of annoying.  But I can't possibly get mad at them.  Not too long ago I was just like them, only, perhaps not quite as smart.  More experienced, certainly, and with much more life experience, obviously.  Still, their presence everyday reminds me of how grateful I am (and should be) that I got into a residency.  On the one hand I sort of feel bad.  I mean, these guys are working really hard to make a good impression.  And here I am, just kind of annoyed at them.  One day I had two of them following me around.  I don't know why.  I'm on the slowest service in the residency I have these two super-eager over-achievers dogging my steps.

Thinking it over, I realize a few things, self lessons, for lack of a better word.

1. The better I treat the students and the more fun and cool I make the residency seem to them, the more they want to get in.  The more people who hear that it is a good experience, the more apply.  The kids who are ranked will naturally be better.  This is to the good - every successive generation of residents should be smarter and more capable.
2. They have spent a lot of time and money to be here.  They are smart and dedicated and the vast majority of them will make good surgeons someday.  I should give them respect for their tenacity and for the fact they have chosen surgery.  They are my kind of people.
3. No one is perfect and if they know I am nice and helpful and encouraging, they will similarly look out for me.  Even though they are not doctors yet, there is less time and experience between them and myself than anybody else around.
4. The ones that get ranked will most certainly have rounded here.  That being the case, I might as well now begin making friends with them because we're going to work together eventually.
5. Finally, and probably most importantly, I should try to be nice to everyone.

More on this later, I think.  One of the most important things we can do as surgeons, and which we owe (and should own), is to become good leaders.  Good leadership should recognize eagerness to work (even if it is some poor 4th year med student trying to shine your clogs, hoping for a good word) and use it to good effect.  More patient contact, more chart checks, more imaging reviews can only improve a residency team's effectiveness.