Fellowship candidate selection at the BEST Medical Center: A novel process

Dr. Ida Lystic completed her MD degree at the prestigious Harvey Medical School (which has since been renamed the Harvey Provider School) and her residency in internal medicine and gastroenterology fellowship at the OTHER (Owen T. Henry and Eugene Rutherford) Medical Center. She was subsequently hired as an assistant professor at the BEST (Byron Edwards and Samuel Thompson) Medical Center in 2015. After eventually completing an extensive list of employment requirements, she was able to begin seeing patients. She had not anticipated a change in the electronic medical record systems-from the user-friendly intuitive SIMPLE (Succinct Input Making Patients' Lives Electronic) system to the complicated and challenging LEGEND (perhaps, as her colleagues had suggested, Lengthy and Excessively Graded Evaluation and Nomenclature for Diagnosis) system. Nor had she expected some of the challenges encountered in her daily clinic routine: The lack of schedulers for her patients (based on recommendations by the Optima Efficiency Consultant Group and incorporated by the BEST efficiency department) and the addition of egg timers on the doors along with a compliance spreadsheet and corrective action plan for the tardy physicians to complete to encourage punctuality (based on the assessment of the Wait Time Committee). She joined the LOST (Laboratory OverSight and Testing) Committee, because participation to support BEST Medical Center practices is strongly suggested for faculty seeking promotion; however, when the new committee chairman-who is a surgeon-was elected, the noon meetings were rescheduled for 6:00 am each month. At the request of her recently divorced department chairman, the philandering Dr. Seymore Fox, she became deputy head of the Gastroenterology Fellowship Selection Committee; she recently coordinated the selection of the physicians for next year's fellowship. The fellowship candidate selection process at the BEST Medical School is probably similar to that performed at the OTHER Medical Center; however, innovative interview techniques-such as assessment for manual dexterity (with the “space race”) and typing skills-have been incorporated to enhance the selection of the best candidates. Dr. Ida Lystic, the gastroenterology department, and the medical school at “the BEST Medical Center” are creations of the author's imagination; yet, many of the anecdotes are based on actual events whose details have been modified to protect the guilty.