What I've Learned Since Residency - Dr. Fox

• Modify Your Horizon

1. Residency is not the end of your training.
2. Treating residency as the mere qualifying race to the rest of your career will allow you to focus on the more distant and important horizon.
3. "Where do you want to be in 25 years?"
   

• Making Yourself Useful is Hard Work

1. When you start your new job... Hold your tongue!  You may be a brilliant genius and may have trained at the most influential and cutting-edge program, but you do not know the ins and outs and the politics that exist at your new place.  Learn these first, before you start trying to fix problems.
2. Fix problems! Don't just point them out!
3. Borrow from others -- your previous ED had an excellent Fever Algorithm ... introduce it and vet it at your new ED.  There are too many others wheels... no need to reinvent them all.
   

• You Will Not Know It All...

1. Refer to the first point... your education does not end at the completion of residency. 
   
2. There are many, many options for continuing your education (Free Online Academic Meducation - look it up), but the one key is that whatever you elect to use... YOU CANNOT BE COMPLACENT ABOUT YOUR EDUCATION.
3. Find your Anti-Complacency Pill.
   

• You Have Learned the Science... Don't Forget the Art!

1. Despite all of the Evidence-Based Medicine... the vast majority of what we do is more art than science.
2. Patients and patients' families expect that you know the science.
3. What distinguishes you is your compassion and communication skills.
   

• Have "Humble Arrogance."

1. Our jobs are ridiculously difficult... you have to be arrogant and full of confidence to even enter a patient's room and think that you are coming to be able to help.
2. Our jobs constantly humble us as with every patient encounter we have an equal opportunity to be helpful or harmful.
3. We need to always respect the potential for Glory and for Failure... yet have the confidence to go into see the next patient.
   

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