Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents

How Should You Evaluate Your Success Network? As you make the transition from residency/fellow- ship to tackle the next phase of your journey into becoming a practicing physician, you have the advantage of already having built a success network that has helped you achieve this major accomplishment. You have relationships with many people who have helped you along the way: professors, program directors, residency advisors, peers, family, friends and others frommany walks of life. Nowwe need to chart and diagram that network to analyze its viability going forward in consideration of your new career goals beyond residency. A COMMON MISTAKE at this stage is to assume that your success network will just “take care of itself”. Believe us, it won’t. Just as your clinical skills have grown and will continue to grow, you need to review your success network, assess how well it meets your next major career goal and adjust accordingly. This will take goal-setting, focused attention and a willingness to recognize when and how your success network needs to change, and then to take action. To start, you will need to analyze your current network, then you can create a plan to enhance that network for a successful transition and future career success. Recommended Tool Evaluating Your Career Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) When your residency faculty evaluates your program annually, the ACGME suggests they perform a “SWOT” analysis on that program to take a “deep dive” into what makes the program tick and how to make it even better. You can now use this tool to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and learn how to surround yourself with experts, advisers, and mentors who can help you pursue your goals and develop personally and professionally. http://md.careers/E-31 SECTION III: T MINUS ONE YEAR CAREER AND LIFE PLANNING GUIDEBOOK FOR MEDICAL RESIDENTS 392