AOA or ACGME???

Its been a long, stressful and unusually uncertain time. But though it is not completely passed, at least I am past one of the most important decisions I had to make, wether to do the AOA or ACGME match. Though I choose, I still chickened out and didnt completely pick one. I only ranked 2 programs and if I do not get into one of those then I am going to try the ACGME match. So really, im a wuss. I ranked Arrowhead number 1 and Lakeland number 2. Ive had email exchanges with both and though Arrowhead doesnt seem very promising at this point im still hopeful that it will work out. If not, I am pretty certain I will get into Lakeland. I have been emailing with the PD and showed lots of interest during the interview, when I went back to shadow for the day and through emails.

Making decisions in life is not usually this hard for me. But this was. I spoke with so many people about this decision including 2 PDs that were advising me and my new awesome mentor Dr. V. 1 PD said go AOA, the other PD said go ACGME. That didn’t help much. So I emailed Dr. V telling him Res was my number 1 and he called me and we had a very realistic chat.

He looked up my interview file and the rank list and was very upfront with me. “Dorothy, I don’t want to mislead you. Right now its unlikely that you will match into our program. If it were up to me, you’d be here. I think you will be a great ER doc and I would love to train you. But its not just up to me.” I went on to find out that since I interviewed while I was there and not during the ‘rotators’ interview time, I didnt interview with anyone from St. Francis that knew me so I didnt get enough support during my interview. Basically, I shot myself in the foot by asking to interview while I was there. If I had stuck with my origional interview in January I would have been interviewed by St. Francis faculty and they could have put me higher on the rank list.

That was a rough pill to swallow.


So, after this conversation, it was clear to me that I have to do AOA. If a program that I got a glowing LOR from and rotated at doesnt rank me, what are my changes of getting into even more competitive ACGME programs that barely know me!?

So now I will wait to see where I will end up for the next 4 years...or not end up. And then I will have to make another list and wait another month to determine my future.

Im just gonna try to keep taking it one day at a time.