How will a medical LOA affect my residency application?

[Gorpu]

Hi all, I'm an MS3 at a mid-tier MD school who took a medical LOA between my 2nd and 3rd year (1 year, it was for mental health but to my understanding my school just stated it as a medical LOA in good academic standing - currently trying to get in touch with student affairs to clarify what it's going to look like on my MSPE). I'm trying to figure out what I want to do now and the two specialties that stand out to me are anesthesia and EM (I know.) On the whole, I think I will be a decent applicant - I've done well in my clerkships so far, have decent extracurricular and research, and have done well on all my testing in the past. However, I know that anesthesia in particular is a fairly competitive specialty and I'm not sure how much this leave is going to affect my app and how to handle it. Has anyone else been in a similar situation to me and how did you navigate it/how did it go? Any advice is appreciated!

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[GoSpursGo]

Will not affect anything

 

[operaman]

No impact at all. Just don’t tell anyone it was for your mental health because there is definitely stigma around that. If it were me, I would have a story ready about how you were helping out when a family member got sick. Or just say you got a bad case of mono and were too fatigued to study for a few months and took the loa to recover. Anything that is clearly over and won’t flare during training.

 

[Gorpu]

No impact at all. Just don’t tell anyone it was for your mental health because there is definitely stigma around that. If it were me, I would have a story ready about how you were helping out when a family member got sick. Or just say you got a bad case of mono and were too fatigued to study for a few months and took the loa to recover. Anything that is clearly over and won’t flare during training.

Only concern I have is how my school reports it on my MSPE. I have a meeting coming up to discuss.

 

[operaman]

Only concern I have is how my school reports it on my MSPE. I have a meeting coming up to discuss.

Yeah that's true, but most places keep it pretty generic. Definitely worth a discussion up front though and they should be honest with you about what they will say so you can plan accordingly. Your MSPE is not protected like most of your LORs, so you should be able to review it before it goes out.

We were actually required to review ours in case there were errors which was good because they had included the wrong student's eval comments on my surgery rotation and that student was clearly not into becoming a surgeon (he's now a successful and happy psychiatrist). Definitely glad to have that seen before programs got it!