TRIANGLE CITY, NC – In an effort to recruit more medical students to its struggling graduate medical education (GME) program, Central State Regional Medical Center has started a new residency program. The program called “Something Surgical” is designed to attract indecisive medical students.
“Well, we spent months interviewing third- and fourth-year medical students about what they were interested and we kept getting vague responses like, ‘I don’t know something surgical’ or ‘something with a balance of surgery and medicine,’” states Dr. Mary Abbott director of GME at Central State. “At first I found it incredibly irritating these students wanting to be part time surgeons and then I figured maybe there is an opportunity here.”
Initial response has been positive with applications flowing in from all over the country. Fourth-year medical student Mandy Walters had this to say: “It’s great, I have been really struggling to pick a specialty, I wanna do something surgical but not sure I wanna live the surgeon’s life, cause that seems hard, but this is the best of both worlds.”
At this point it is unclear what surgical procedures the “Something Surgical” residents will learn however much like most surgical residencies they probably won’t actually do anything in the operating room until their third year.
“I’m not really worried,” stated Abbott. “All these kids are gonna probably switch up into Anesthesia or Family Medicine by year two anyway.” She was then overhead telling a colleague, “Once these snowflakes figure out that anything surgical requires sixteen-hour days. They will be begging to transfer into a different residency program.”
