Dear Future Anesthesia Colleagues, The daunting task facing many of you during your fourth year of medical school is a decision over which I’m sure several people have lost a few precious hours of sleep. It seems like yesterday when I was in your shoes, worrying over which program fit both my personal and professional needs. Well, halfway through my residency, I can tell you that I’ve never been happier with the decision I made in both my career as an anesthesiologist and electing to pursue my training at Northwestern. As anesthesiology residents at Northwestern, the clinical training you will receive is among the best of the country. Our regional program allows residents to perform between 100-200 blocks during their CA-1 and CA-3 years, with extensive teaching in ultrasound and continuous peripheral catheter placement. The four to six months of pediatrics at Children’s Memorial Hospital will present you with both bread and butter as well as medically complex cases for kids ranging from a couple of days old to teenagers, thereby providing you with the training to handle most pediatric cases that you might face later as an attending. Prentice Women’s Hospital, with their more than 10,000 deliveries per year, will provide you with ample opportunities to develop and perfect your obstetric anesthesia skills. Our cardiac program has really taken off over the past few years, both in terms of number and complexity of cases, to the point where now we are starting a cardiothoracic anesthesia fellowship at Northwestern. These are just a few of the highlights of the type of sound clinical training you will get at our institution. You will definitely work hard, but I guarantee that, when you graduate from this residency program, you will not only be able to confidently handle any case that you will face, but will also be a highly respected, marketable anesthesiologist. Besides the type of training you will receive, which I think speaks for itself, the one facet of Northwestern that I think makes it stand above all other programs is the type of faculty that make up our department. The faculty here have a true desire to teach residents and help them succeed, whether through off-the-cuff discussions in the OR or the formal teaching lecture program Tuesday through Friday mornings. In addition, many rotations, like ICU, OB, regional, cardiac, and pediatrics, have additional teaching sessions to discuss in-depth topics and journal articles in these subspecialties. Furthermore, our faculty provides excellent teaching sessions every other Thursday in our state-of-the-art simulation lab, where we go through one of several interactive OR scenarios (e.g. amniotic fluid embolism) and then, afterwards, discuss it and go over the salient teaching points. Finally, our CA-3 residents have written board and mock-oral board sessions to help them prepare for their certification exams after graduation. As for location, I can’t think of any city in the country that is better than Chicago! This city has something for everybody, whether you’re a sports nut, a theater-goer, a culinary connoisseur, a shop-aholic, or a fitness fanatic. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is in the Gold Coast/Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, smack-dab in the middle of everything to do in the city, just two blocks from the beaches of beautiful Lake Michigan, one block from the shops of the Magnificent Mile, and a short walk or cab ride to other attractions. And while winters here are nothing to write home about, the summers here are just absolutely incredible, with sailing on the lake, the numerous festivals and street parties, and abundant outdoor activities that the city offers in its myriad of parks. And, yes, we have plenty of time outside of the hospital to have a life and enjoy ourselves. Perhaps, however, the one thing that has made these years of residency so notable has been the phenomenal group of fellow residents with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work. Besides being an exceptionally brilliant group of people, they have become good friends and colleagues who continue to challenge and amaze me. There are so many things that make this program such an exceptional place to train that I can’t possibly talk about all of them here. I invite you to take a look for yourself and, please, feel free to contact me. I wish you all the luck in your search for a residency program and look forward to hopefully meeting you in the near future. Sincerely, |
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Letter from Resident Christopher Cambic, MD |
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