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Residency Interviews Have Gone Virtual

Dr. Bryan Hierlmeier conducts virtual interviews.

By: Sara B. Robertson, M.D.

When the pandemic hit in March and made its presence real and lasting, we knew that this residency interview season would take on a whole new look. All three of our fellowship programs—pediatric anesthesia, pain management, and cardiac anesthesia—all adapted quite easily and were able to conduct interviews virtually in the months of April through August of 2020. These programs have a much smaller number of applicants however, and we knew we were going to need to get creative with how to go about conducting residency interviews completely virtual.

Dr. Bryan Hierlmeier, our residency program director, and Cathy Braboy, our program coordinator, started brainstorming early and went to work to make sure we had a successful interview season. Our department had over nine hundred applicants for eight PGY-1 positions and two PGY-2 positions, and approximately one hundred of those applicants were interviewed. We used WebEx as our virtual interview platform, and each interviewer had their own chat room in which each applicant could enter securely for each interview. The residents also held a resident meet and greet the night before via WebEx to meet all the applicants in a more relaxed environment to answer all their questions about the program.

Our graduate medical education (GME) office produced a wonderful introductory informational video about UMMC as well as virtual video tour of the University which we posted to our departmental page for all applicants to view. Dr. Hierlmeier also put together a departmental video about our program which detailed specifics about our department and the residency program (videos below).

Even though the virtual interviews went well this year, we will look forward and hope that next year we can go back to in-person interviews! The department is excited about a successful match in March 2021!