Part 8: Advice from the experts: Helpful information for current residents

In this series, experts in the field advise current residents and offer insight into how they can make the most of their time and experience moving forward with their careers.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Veidehi Dedania, MD:

One of the most important things to remember is, what are your goals in your career? And primarily for many of us as clinicians, it is to be a good clinician and a good surgeon. And in order to accomplish that, it's really important to take everything you can from your training regarding patients that you've seen, mentors that you've worked with, and asking questions. Because that's the most important way to understand why we do the things that we do, and how you can continue to improve.

Vikas Chopra, MD:

So you know, I was in charge of the residency training program for 6 years in my recent past. And so really, I think you have to be open to new technologies, new approaches, and understanding and respecting the fundamentals. So really the most important thing is, if you understand fundamentals in surgery, then you can build upon that. If you learn incorrect fundamentals, then it's much harder to become an expert surgeon. So always refreshing your fundamentals–how to do great suturing, how to make a great incision, how to close an incision, you know, how to make the incision safer and better, things like that. I think that's really, really important.