ONE PODIATRY STUDENT'S CRIP™ STORY

Bob felt sick.  How had he done in his residency interviews?  Who knows?  It's hard to tell.  All right.  Let's face it.  Things hadn't gone so well.

To begin with, he couldn't leave early enough on Friday night to miss the rush hour traffic.  It was so late by the time he checked into the hotel that the restaurant was closing.  He was more hungry than he was tired so he had gone out looking for something to eat.  The only thing open at that hour was a hot dog stand.   Big mistake.  That chili dog came back to haunt him all night long.  When his stomach finally settled down (thank God for Lomotil®) the clock read 3:30 am.   He rolled over and dozed off, knowing that his first interview wasn't until 10:30 am.  Plenty of time for quality sleep.  Too bad his room was surrounded by a bunch of bright eyed, bushy tailed early birds who were up by 7:00 am, flushing toilets and taking showers.

At 7:30 am, he finally gave up and decided he might as well get dressed.   When he jumped out of bed, his head rushed with a roaring sinus headache from not getting enough sleep.  He dug through his suitcase only to find he hadn't packed his decongestant.  He also noticed that he hadn't packed his black dress socks.  Do white athletic socks go with a business suit?  This was going to be a very long day.

The hotel pharmacy didn't have a decongestant so he settled for an antihistamine.  He swallowed a couple of them with black coffee and checked in at the CRIP™ registration room.  The CRIP™ staff was very organized and helpful.   The students talking to them seemed confident and self-assured.   Everyone else here looked like they knew what was going on.  Bob had no clue.   For a fleeting moment he thought that maybe he should have read all the information CRIP™ had provided.  He just couldn't be bothered with small details.

It was too early and Bob had nowhere to go.  So, he went to his first interview site an hour early and waited outside the door hoping they might be ahead of schedule.  The two applicants who were scheduled before him were also there, heatedly discussing the diagnosis and treatment of osteomyelitis in such detail he thought they wrote the book.  This only made him more nervous.  By the time they called him in (unfortunately right on schedule and one hour later), he had medicine head and his stomach was churning.  The Tigan® he took 15 minutes earlier had not taken effect but the 12 hour antihistamine was in full force.  It was all he could do to stay focused.

Bob was instructed to sit in a lone chair facing the interviewers.  He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and crossed his arms and legs.  The four interviewers stared at his white socks.  They started by asking detailed questions on osteomyelitis.  Well, what do you know?  No wonder those two stooges waiting with him were so knowledgeable on the subject.  Ends up the interviewers were starting this way with everybody.  It figured this was one topic he did not know well, but he faked his way through.  His mind began to wander as he answered more and more questions.  When they asked him how he would contribute to their residency program, he was still thinking about his answer to the previous question.  He thought, "Did I really say that I would prescribe Lomotil® for the fungus nail infection?  Please God, I hope I said Lamisil®.  How could I confuse the two?  Why did I have to get diarrhea today?"  He became so distracted, he began babbling like an idiot.  He forgot what he had just said and repeated a couple of things just to be sure.  By the time he finished, all the interviewers were staring at him with blank expressions.  Was that a bad sign?   Maybe he had impressed them to the point that they were dumbfounded.  One way or the other, the interview was over abruptly.  They thanked him and sent him on his way.  He really was not sure if he had gotten all his points across.  They just hadn’t asked him the questions that he wanted to answer.

The chili dog from the night before was coming back for another visit.   Time for more Tigan® just to be safe.  Between the hot dog, the antihistamine, the Tigan® and just plain nervousness, he was feeling miserable when he went into his second interview.  He felt so lousy, the whole interview was a blur.  Oh well, it really didn't  matter.  He hadn't put much effort into it because he actually was not interested in it.  He had only applied to this program as a backup in case he didn't match with a residency he wanted.

It was the next interview that was the killer.  It was the program he wanted most, his first choice.  He hadn’t had time to do much research so you could have knocked him over with a feather when he entered the room and came face to face with Dr. Dread.  How was he to know the guy would become the residency director at this hospital?  He had met Dread during his Externship at another hospital and it had been a disaster.  Sure makes you think twice about making enemies.  They say never burn your bridges, but it was too late now.  Bob liked to debate and argue to show how knowledgeable he was.  Dr. Dread never appreciated his strong opinions and had disliked him from the beginning.  Now Dread was one of the people deciding his future.  Dread and his cohorts had only one question for Bob.  They handed him a pad and asked him to write a prescription for Compazine®.   Bob sat there with a stomach full of Tigan® and a mind completely blank on Compazine®.  He fumbled and bumbled and asked if he could write it for Tigan®.  They said no.  He could only hope that Compazine® and Tigan® had the same dosage, so he wrote:  Rx: Compazine 250mg, disp: 10 caps, 1 po qid.  The committee took the pad from him, looked at his prescription, glanced at each other and thanked him for coming.  Bob could have sworn he heard one of them snicker.  Was it possible that this entire residency program hinged upon his knowledge of Compazine®?  Oh well, the likelihood of getting this residency was slim anyway with Dread there.  He could only hope that Dread wouldn’t talk with the other residency directors.

Bob spent the next hour in the men's room and missed his interview with the program that was his second choice.   Instead of informing the CRIP™ staff that he needed help, he decided to go straight to the program's interview room and hopefully get squeezed into their schedule.  He had been waiting thirty minutes when the door to the interview room opened and they called for a guy named Cosgrove.  Cosgrove hadn’t shown up so Bob was quick to grab the opportunity to push his way in for an interview.  Since he had missed his scheduled appointment, his folder was placed in the discard pile.  Unfortunately for Bob, the discard pile had been removed from the room and placed into the residency director's car for the trip home later.  There was no time to retrieve the folder so they started  interviewing without it.  Things got a little confusing and Bob realized halfway through his interview that two of the four interviewers thought he was Cosgrove.   It took some backtracking to undo the confusion.  He did his best to hold their attention even though they were all busy writing because they had no information in front of them.  They seemed a little annoyed and didn’t look very impressed.  Maybe he should have just let them think he was Cosgrove.  It might have gone better.

The day was finally over.  On his way out, Bob glanced into the hotel restaurant.  There was Dr. Dread, enjoying dinner with all the residency directors Bob had interviewed with today.  He was telling them a story and they were all laughing.

Bob congratulated himself on at least getting through his interviews.  He had no idea how it would end up.  He would just wait to see how he matched.  He had done the best he could,…hadn’t he?