News and Notes

New Residency Preference Exercise

A new exercise for the Careers in Medicine Web site is under development to help students search for residency programs and rate them based on their preferences and needs. The Residency Preference Exercise (RPE) will replace the current Residency Program Selection Exercise and is completed in two parts. Students first complete a Residency Preference Profile by rating the importance of various criteria related to choosing a residency, such as reputation of the program, call schedule, program setting, salary, and program director qualities. In the second part, students search for and rate residency programs according to the criteria they selected. Key features of the exercise include side-by-side comparisons and the ability to save multiple profiles and program searches. The exercise can be used in a number of selection strategies such as rating PGY1 and PGY2 programs they are considering, or comparing programs in different specialties.

Once the new RPE tool is released into production, students will no longer have access to their prior results from the older exercise. Launching later this summer in the "Getting into Residency" section of the site, we hope that the new Residency Preference Exercise will be highly utilized by students and advisors alike. It will be invaluable to first and second year students just beginning to consider what might be most important to them about residency programs. And as third and fourth year students begin to search for specific programs that might meet their needs and goals, the RPE will again play a crucial role as they move closer to the residency years.

Share Your Career Planning Resources with the Careers in Medicine Knowledge Base

Careers in Medicine staff are creating a knowledge base to share information and ideas about what schools are doing in their CiM programs. We envision the knowledge base as a clearinghouse for workshops, templates, program outlines, curricula, and other successful career planning resources.

To make this endeavor a reality, we need your help. We are soliciting contributions to the knowledge base that you are willing to share with your colleagues. Do you have an outline or description of your CiM program that might help a school who is just starting to implement the program? Do you have a workshop or course materials to share or booklets and handouts that other schools might find useful? Do you have an advising program that is working well? Share your information, tools, and resources through the CiM knowledge base.

To submit a resource to the knowledge base, please read and complete the submission form, then email the form and an electronic version of your material to careersinmedicine@aamc.org. If you plan to submit several items, please complete a separate form for each resource you submit. Only electronic versions of your resources will be accepted.

Once we begin receiving submissions and see what types of resources we are getting, we will begin organizing, categorizing, loading them on the advisor Web site for everyone to peruse. We are planning to eventually create a Careers in Medicine version of MedEdPORTAL. MedEdPORTAL is an online publication that offers peer review to help faculty publish and share educational resources. Because it will be over a year until we have the resources to build a CiM version, a knowledge base on the advisor site is the best temporary solution. We do encourage you to submit any educational resources that you feel may be peer-reviewable to MedEdPORTAL. You can get more information on publishing your resources on the MedEdPORTAL site. If you have any questions, please contact Jeanette Calli at (202)862-6270 or careersinmedicine@aamc.org.

Upcoming regional training workshops

Join us for the next CiM Workshop. Our fall session will be held September 22-23 in Washington, DC at the AAMC headquarters.

The sessions are interactive and focus on counseling skills, advising students on career development and decision-making, using the CiM web site, and implementing the program. In addition to learning some valuable skills that can be used in career planning with students, participants are also provided with case study experiences and opportunities to exchange ideas with their fellow attendees. Seats are limited so register early. Meeting details and registration information are currently available at the AAMC Meetings site.

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