July Has Arrived

I'm deep into my surgical rotation now, so posting is down a bit - but I lucked into a full long weekend off, so perhaps I can pick up the pace a bit!

It's now July and that means a lot of changes in academic hospitals. Residents' years run from July 1st to June 30th, so today represents a big milestone for many people. Residents who are in their final year have officially just finished the most important part of their training and are going onto fellowships or into the working world. Other residents are moving up into new roles or new positions within their residency program.

In addition, the new residents are starting today. Obviously an exciting time for them, but it's interesting to see the wariness the rest of the hospital staff have towards this new transition. The July Effect, the worsening of outcomes in academic hospitals, provokes enough anxiety among senior residents and nursing staff. The evidence for patient harm in July is a bit conflicted, but the nurses certainly seem to believe that their lives are going to get harder starting today, as the seasoned PGY1s move onto their second year and get replaced with fresh new residents who may have been out of hospital for months. Many will be coming from other schools or even other countries and won't be familiar with the way our hospitals work. The new residents have the least experience of anyone in their position, yet the same level of responsibility.

I expect it will be a change for us clerks too. We've now been in the hospital for 10 months straight and know our role pretty well. We're only a year from starting residency ourselves. When we started clerkship, even the most junior resident was two years ahead of us in training and had a few months under their belt. When I start back on Monday, the training gap closes to a year while the incoming residents will still be adjusting to their new roles and surroundings. We're not at a resident level yet, but the gap between us and our residents will probably never be smaller.

I'm interested to see how the dynamic changes over the next few months!