I'd say most of the above is good. A few quick hitters:
1) Learn from the best.
Find mentors. Scrub with the highest quality attendings that you can; do the same for office rotations.
As mentioned, residency is not as long as you think. Hopefully you picked a match with a good amount of surgery and surplus logs, and there's a lot more to learn than just the technical and anatomy parts of surgery. Heck, any decent 3rd or 4th year pod student should know anatomy and how to suture and what the instruments are called and what they do. As you'll soon figure out, some attendings get it, and some don't (procedure selection, rationale, composure, efficiency running the OR, running a great private practice, communication with pts in office, etc). So, pick a Lapidus with a very good attending over a triple with a putzer. Pick an Austin-Akin with the program's top attending over SER-2 ORIF with a mediocre attending. Pick a TMA with a great attending (so you can talk practice philosophy) over Haglund with a bumbler who you'd never want to emulate. Some attendings are awesome, and others are "first year attening" for good reason. And yes, sometimes you want the ones who pass the knife or the ones where you might "learn what not to do" (or sometimes you have no choice as pgy-1 or pgy-2), but don't underestimate the conversational aspect and the positive effects of being in the shadow of excellence versus alongside ho-hum.
2) Learn from the 5 year residency programs at your hospital: particularly gen surg and ortho.
They are there almost
twice as long as you are. Fellows who did residency there... more than 2x you! They are bigger programs, more networked. The residents in those 5yr programs, particularly the surgery seniors and chiefs with decent looks and social skill, will have the scouting report on nearly any and all attractive and single(ish) nurses, PAs, HUCs, security guards, and everything else. That knowledge is
power. If you think you spotted the cute ER triage LPN or that new cafe worker first, a handful of them have probably already dated him/her. They will also know where the good parties and bars are. Any teaching hospital is hundreds of young people who studied A&P and are now in the physical prime of their life working waaay too much, so embrace it and don't just work or sleep all of the time. Make the most of you limited free time. Yin and Yang. Hang with your pod co-residents who are cool, but get outside just the podiatry bubble early and often.
There is
no reason residency can't be fun; even if you're married/monog or a homebody, joking around and stories still just makes rounds and your away rotations and overall residency life a lot more fun. If you are in the dating game, that intel from the 5yr program residents can help you know which are spouse-hunting versus having fun. Mainly, they'll help you to swerve the gold diggers, cray cray ones, ones who are into hard party/habits, the stage-five clingers, etc. No joke. A lot of gen surg and ortho programs are kinda like the Marines: work hard, play hard. Don't be afraid to ask about the PACU redhead or the the cute EVS brunette. Ignore their 'personnel' knowledge and experience at your own peril. Two ways to learn: your mistakes or someone else's.
* and if you matched at a VA or some small place with pod or pod + FP as the only residencies, you seriously miss out. Woe is you
*
3) Jobs are just jobs.
They're a learning experience (hence residency being a job also). You will learn what you like and what you don't from each job. You will learn what you value. Maybe you want a lot of pts/cases, maybe you PP to learn skills to be owner one day, maybe you like easy hours. First jobs seldom stick, so find a decent one and be happily surprised if it lasts awhile. Fyi, the mentorship idea mentioned for residency applies to jobs also. If you can work in the same office or dept or at least group as a dynamite attending, that's big for a first job. That is why the nursing home jobs are so destructive... your mind just rots away, no challenge, no mentorship. Regardless, plan to leave the first job and be wiser for having worked there. Understand if non-competes are upheld in the area (if that matters to you). As to when to search for jobs, most want someone who can start in the next 6 months, 12 max. That's just how it is. You can browse 1st year, make some calls 2nd year (visits if you can afford it). The end of 2nd year and beginning of 3rd year is really the time to be serious about it. You can try cold call and creating jobs earlier (mid 2nd year?) but that's pretty tough sledding because a bite might just turn into them posting a job if your graduation is 18months away. Also, if you got an offer 2nd year, you seldom have any basis for comparison... and there's a lot of time for things to change or fall through. Plan for end of 2nd year and beginning 3rd year to seriously shoot out calls, send CV, travel to interviews.
Learn to budget and invest. Being able to budget or failing at that can make somebody happy making just $100k or have someone else on the verge on bankrupt at even $400k income. A fantastic job does no good if you or partner are miserable with your hours and/or location. Do a Roth IRA while in residency, have a basic emergency fund, tighten the belt, pay student loan interest if you can, and be happily surprised if you can comfortably afford a new Tundra and a 3 or 4br with a couple acres one day... don't set yourself up to be mad if you can't afford to drive a Maserati and a 6br beach house, you know? Starting the "doctor lifestyle" too early (or at all) has doomed many more DPMs to being miserable and/or trying fraud than failing to get to $300k has.
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