North Of The Border---May 4, 2007

Our time up here is coming to a close. Our house went on the market this past week. Here is the link.

http://www.dsmhomes.com/properties/property_detail.cfm?AgentID=90&PropertyID=320127&PropertyTypeID=1

Not too much out of the ordinary going on. Everyone is doing fine.

I am due in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 4th for my first rotation. This is at John Peter Smith Hospital and is the county hospital for Tarrant County, Texas. This is a 465 bed Level II trauma center. It is not quite as big as St. John's. I have been told I will get lots of experience with trauma patients so I am looking forward to it. I will be living in a call room at the hospital for the entire month, so that may prove to be interesting.

I will be submitting my application for residency this month. Fortunately, there is a centralized application service so I only have to submit a single application. The service distributes the application to the programs I am interested in. The other good thing is that most of the programs participate in an "mass interview weekend" in Chicago next December. This will cut down on a lot of traveling. The interviews are stressful and the applicant is presented with cases and is expected to give an opinion as to diagnosis and treatment. It is pretty much an oral exam. However, I have heard some programs require you to demonstrate some manual dexterity skills such as suturing and knot tying. Our professors have been simulating these interviews with us over the past several weeks so I am hoping to be well prepared.