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Why I Chose the Yale Pediatric Residency Program...

A few words from some of our 3rd year residents:

Julie Gallombardo, MD

Julie Gallombardo, MD
I grew up in Southern New Jersey and began my residency search by looking at programs in the northeast, not far from my family. I visited seven or eight programs prior to visiting Yale, and at most of those programs, I knew I would receive excellent training in pediatrics. The difference at Yale was the people associated with the hospital and the sense of community that seemed to exist among them. I think that I was most “wowed” when Dr. Friedman, our residency director, greeted each applicant by name, demonstrating for me his uncanny ability to have learned and to have remembered the names, faces, and pertinent information about each one of us. I felt welcomed and important because such a personal interest had been taken in me.

My first interview was with Dr. Karen Santucci, a pediatric emergency medicine faculty member, who is now head of the Pediatric ER. She was, by far, the most energetic and enthusiastic physician I had ever met. We had a wonderful discussion about my goals for the future and about how Yale would help me reach them. The interview felt much more like a conversation with a colleague I had known for years than a residency interview. While my experiences with Dr. Friedman and Dr. Santucci had already begun to elevate the Yale program above the others to which I had applied, meeting the residents who came to meet me really was the most important part of my first experience at Yale. The residents were not only welcoming, but they were excited to talk about their program. It was also quite clear that the residents did not just work together. They talked about how supportive they were of each other, both at and away from work. Now as I look back on the past two years that I have completed at Yale, I believe that I have been most fortunate to have had the opportunity to train closely with some of the most influential pediatric physician-scientists. The physicians in this program clearly place a high priority on educating residents. However, more importantly for me, I feel prepared and excited to begin the search for a position in general pediatrics. I credit my program and my fellow residents at Yale for the knowledge and experience I have gained. I cannot imagine myself anywhere else. ~ Julie Gallombardo, MD, PGY-3, Jefferson Medical College

Virginia Pierce, MD

Virginia Pierce, MD
When you hit the residency program interview trail, you will probably find a number of institutions where you would get great training and leave feeling well-prepared for the next step in your career. What makes Yale Pediatrics a special place is the extraordinary group of people who choose to be here. Residency, wherever you do it, is an once-in-a-lifetime experience. You’ll have intense emotional experiences, times that you wish you had gotten a lot more sleep, and enough to learn that you may sometimes feel like you’re trying to drink from a fire hose. During my residency at Yale, the context for all of these challenges has been an incredibly supportive group of resident classmates who genuinely care about each other, and a faculty that is not only academically and clinically excellent, but also accessible and interested in the education and well-being of their residents. This environment has been an ideal one for me, and not one that I think I could have found at every program I considered.

Liking and respecting the people I work with is very important to me. The residents at Yale actually choose to spend time together outside of the hospital – whether going out for sushi, hiking in Sleeping Giant Park, sharing a potluck Thanksgiving dinner, or traveling for a week together in Costa Rica. I’ve made friends here whom I know I could ask for help with just about anything; even though I’m far away from my family in the Midwest, I have a very strong support network in New Haven. Yale residents and faculty alike also tend to have a good sense of humor – I think that we provide outstanding care for our patients without taking ourselves too seriously. Laughing a lot makes us better equipped to deal with the stressful situations that inevitably arise when caring for sick kids.

I’m planning to do a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases after residency, and I think that the training I’ve gotten here has prepared me well for this. Choosing attendings to ask for advice about fellowship hasn’t meant choosing between faculty members with whom I’ve worked closely and those who are nationally-known and highly respected for their work. In our program, these are the same people. Looking over the list of faculty on our website, I realize that I’ve worked with the vast majority of them over the course of my residency. I think that almost all of them would greet me by name whether we passed in the hallway of the hospital, or at a concert on the New Haven Green.

Before fellowship, I’ll be staying an extra year at Yale to do a chief residency. I have enjoyed and gotten so much out of my training here that I want to be able to do something to contribute to the quality of our program, the clinical care we provide, and the educational experience of the residents and medical students. I look forward to meeting you when you visit Yale, and working with you if you choose to join us! ~ Virginia Pierce, MD, PGY-3, Washington University in St. Louis

Robert Silge, MD

Robert Silge, MD
My search for a residency program was not at all a simple one. My wife and I were coming from Texas and visited programs from Hawaii to Connecticut, trying to find a place where she could do a post- doctoral fellowship and I could find a program in pediatrics. She quickly learned that it was very difficult for me to vocalize the strengths and weaknesses of a given program after I had interviewed at it. They all seemed very similar, and really most programs are. There will be subtle differences in call schedules, PICU time, how many hospitals you work in, etc. but any given program will meet the same basic requirements, and will probably give you good basic training in pediatrics.

We soon had an established pattern on an interview day. My wife would drop me off, I'd take the tour and talk to the faculty before a catered lunch with some busy but friendly residents. Meanwhile she'd be meeting the department of her decidedly non-medical field and come pick me up at the end of the day. I'd get in the car, she'd ask “what did you think?” and I'd usually say something generally vague like “I could see myself there” and we'd try to sort out where in the pecking order that particular city fell. When she picked me up in New Haven the answer was the only "I loved it" of the whole process.

The size was just right, the people were friendly, the residents seemed to really know their stuff, there was a huge statue of Babar... all good things. But I've decided that finding a residency program is a lot like dating. You can't easily put it into words, you simply know when you've got the right one. I could feel that Yale was the right one for us, and when I opened that letter on match day I couldn't have been more delighted at where I would be continuing my training. My time at Yale has been a relationship that worked out very well. My daughter was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital when I was an intern. The environment has been nothing but supportive. When you're surrounded by people that love kids they love yours as well. My wife brings our daughter to all the residency functions and she has easily made friends with the other residents and some of the spouses. I can look back and see how far I've come in patient care, knowledge, and leadership and I know that this place molded who I am as a doctor. I decided that I wanted to pursue fellowship in Allergy/ Immunology, and despite the competitiveness of the field I was confident that I was very well equipped to match successfully, which I did.

A program director I met along my interview trail told us to visualize opening that envelope on match day and imagine what your reaction would be when you see a given school printed there. If you wouldn't be thrilled to go to that place it shouldn't be your top choice. Yale was my top choice.