Your third year of IM residency will help prepare you for the independent practice of medicine, chief residency or fellowship. Use this year to fill in any gaps you may have identified and solidify your foundation of knowledge in internal medicine, team building and leadership skills.
- Continue to be a positive role model for your program.
- Start the year with reflection and an honest self-assessment.
- Review the milestones linked to "ready for unsupervised practice" and create a personalized set of learning objectives for the year. Periodically track your progress in achieving those goals.
- Identify letter writers for fellowship applications.
- Prepare for fellowship interviews- ask your program directors to coach you for these with practice interviews.
- Identify faculty willing to serve as job references.
- Apply for your independent state medical license.
- Explore job opportunities.
- Find ways to improve work-life integration for the long term and have these factor into your job selection.
- Create a year-long study plan to prepare for the certifying examination.
- Continue to improve and enhance your team leadership and teaching skills.
- Solicit constructive feedback on these skills.
- Complete your required research or quality improvement projects.
- Continue to build your expertise and enrich your experience in ambulatory medicine.
- Search out additional clinical teaching opportunities as these are the best way to solidify your IM knowledge.
- Continue to critically review your clinical decisions and actively learn from mistakes.
- Select experiences on electives that help build skills to help you with what you plan on doing next year (chief resident, job or fellowship).