What advice would you give a prospective resident/fellow?
My advice to an incoming resident/fellow would be to try and imagine themselves in the training environment before deciding. You want to be able to picture yourself with your peers/colleagues as well as the ancillary staff since that is who you will be interacting with the most. Moving to a new place is difficult enough to begin with, you want to feel comfortable at your place of work.
What most attracted you to doing your GME training here?
What most attracted me to doing my GME training here was the people. Having done both residency and fellowship here, I have gotten to know a lot of people around the hospital and the city of San Antonio. Southern Hospitality is definitely present wherever you go. The reputation is what brought me to UTHSCSA, the people are what made it easy to stay.
Using 3 words, how would you describe your training program and community? Why?
Busy, Friendly, Supportive.
I would say that any training program you look at whether it be for residency or fellowship, you want it to be busy. Getting towards the end of training you realize how important it is to try and see as much as possible during training so there are less surprises afterwards.
Having friendly people around makes a huge difference. You do spend a large portion of your time in the hospital, so having people around that are friendly makes it that much more pleasant.
Making friends that are more like family now helps one to realize how big a difference it is to have people that support you around. From talking about work issues to stuff outside of work, having friends that you can discuss anything with makes the days much less stressful.
-Aazib Khan, MD, Fellow, Cardiology