Module 7: How to Fill Out Your Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) Form

Module seven. How to fill the Electronic Residency Application Service Form. What good would it be if you dedicated time and effort into gathering experiences? As a volunteer, as a foreign medical doctor, as a medical student. But you failed to represent those experiences on your very final application. How about your observerships electives? You've spent money on gathering these experiences, the rotations, all the work that you've completed thus far on your entire journey to residency. I believe strongly that it's your intention to present your best work to your future employer or residency program so that they can learn about your values, your. Commitment to service your workplace ethic, and they can gain a vision of what it could be like to potentially work with Well, you're in the right place. Welcome back. I'm happy to see you again today. And I'm proud of you because you've gone through all the preceding modules. And I know that you've been learning new material to assist you on your journey, your pathway to residency. However, today I want to teach you how you are going to fill out your residency application form. In the IMG community, we call this the ERAS But ERAS truly stands for Electronic Residency Application This is a form that you must become very familiar with before you apply it's provided to you for free at. A template and a tool that you can practice The AMC makes this readily available on their website. And I'll provide you the URL down below in this video. You can click on it and you get an immediate download. I must notify you. However, I did not produce that material, so it belongs to the AAMC. Now, what I'm going to do in this section is I'll walk you through some case studies. These are actual applications that I've reviewed in the past for students who have matched into residency. And I'll show you specifically how these students and medical graduates filled out this form. But I want to go over some objectives for you today because I want to make sure that at the end of this module you've learned some specific So today, here are your objectives. Number 1 you'll learn how to fill out your unique application form using your experiences. You learn how to input your past work, educational and even voluntary service on your application form. You'll learn what makes an application competitive versus not. You learn new methods that help you stand out when compared to your colleagues. I want you to learn how to distinguish between past career experiences that matter the most in this process and where to place them. Are you ready? The misconception that occurs in our medical student and foreign graduate community is we think that scholarly activities such as research are unattainable because we're fixated on cumbersome work such as studies that are randomized controlled We lack institutional support. Right? Our medical schools don't have a structured, IRB process that enable us to get publications. so we feel like all of this is impossible when we're being asked to present our research work isn't that so? We falsely believe that the research that only matters is bench research and so we neglect other forms of clinical research such as QI - Quality improvement activities, right? Case reports, metaanalysis smaller scale research or scholarly work We underestimate this small scale work, easy, like easy things such as podium presentation, posted presentations. (More of this in module 2) And that's just one example. But I really want you to watch these slides closely when you're going through this module because in this lecture, I'll show you case studies we'll go over are some specific work that you've done that you weren't even thinking about It's really about showcasing your true self, your work, your past experiences. Even your postgraduate thesis that you may have done or papers that you produced during an MPH. These are all great opportunities to showcase in your form. So today, you have an opportunity to showcase yourself and show your work. You're going to put out all the hard work, all the time that you've invested in these years of medical school. You're going to put them together and represent them on a piece of paper so that when these programs are reviewing your forms, they can get a holistic view of who you are. For those of you who've been in practice, you've continued to work in the community, in service. You've continued to impact research in medical education in your home country, whether as a community based person or even in academics. These are strong suits and you need to represent them on your application. We're going to pull back the curtain and we're going to pull out all those experiences from your background, even though you feel like it's non medical. I'll show. You exactly where you can put them and how you can make that tie into what specialty it is that you are applying into. I think it's really important to anticipate what is coming, because if you look at these ERAS applications, you say you're still in medical school, for example, right? You're still doing rotations. When you're doing a rotation, I want you to think about what I did today. Where can I make this fall under my application so that's for those of you in medical so you know exactly where you can plug things in. Oh, I did a presentation. I did a podium, a poster presentation. I wrote a paper, an article. I submitted an image to clinical images in medicine. So today, as you're going through this module, it's going to help you triage these experiences. What experiences are worth having, which ones are just the way of your time, because you don't have time to waste. Another example you're in medical school. You're rotating as a third or fourth year student at a US hospital, and you get the opportunity to participate in grand rounds. You should take that, right? Absolutely. Because you know exactly where that goes fall on this eras application that we're going to talk about today. So if you're working with a physician or an attending and the physician mentions something like we have a lot of patients in this community that have high blood pressure and they also tend to have sleep apnea, we have a strong correlation there. Ding, ding, ding! That's an idea for you. Can I maybe write a report? You can decide to say, "Hey, can I do a cross sectional survey?" And we can determine the incidents and associations, maybe the social determinants of health that impact this community so much we can bridge the maybe to provide them the necessary medical education or the fat machines or well, help with weight That's a project that you can initiate. And this whole course, it's about helping you initiate things. It's. While helping you begin to think in the way that a US medical student thinks, and even get beyond that to be more competitive than they I'm going to show you where all these experiences fall under your application so you can be able to decipher and search through those opportunities in your daily life. If you're doing an MPH right now, for example, you may have a project that you have to complete. Yeah, you have to write a thesis for your that is valuable. That could be work that you represent on your ERAS application down the road. Absolutely. You could be able to tie in some of your work experiences in your Master's of Public Health or Master's of Health Administration degree and you could say, ah, if I did my project on this and it exposed me to X-Y-Z this is where it's going to fall under when I come into my experiences in my ERAS packet. We'll walk through such examples today and I really want you to pay close attention to because even if you're not applying this season. You need to know this stuff so you can gather experiences that you can put on your application. Like I said, these experiences add up. Okay? So this is how you're going to put them together right now, right here, working with me. Instead of waiting till the very end of September of the year, you choose to apply. I want you to start thinking, start working backward right now in your mind. Build up where these things are going to go. On your final application, you are going to create a compelling, competitive, and a very highly successful ERAS packet with me today Very well, guys, this is your opportunity as a student, as an international medical graduate, as a physician. I want you to create your own own medical success story. And that's my goal right here at the IMG Roadmap Ⓡ. I hope that together we can achieve that. And I'll see you right now in class.

Welcome. Alright, welcome back. I hope you have your worksheet ready It should look something like this and the link will be included down below so you can click on it and download it. It belongs to AAMC. I own no rights to it but it's a free worksheet that we can use together in filling out your application form What I want you to do first is do not rush into trying to fill out this form on a computer right now. Just get a pen and write directly into your worksheet that you have printed and downloaded. And then because we're doing a lot of brainstorming today, we're going to go through some particular aspects and you're going to sit back later and review these items and really give it some thought. Because one of the mistakes I see a lot of IMGs doing is to just go ahead and get computer happy and type in their application and just try to fill it out really fast. There's no reflection. They're not really looking back to see what truly matters and what doesn't. So we're going to do that today. You're going to do all the brainstorming on paper, and then you're going to transfer that onto your portal provided to you by my All right, so we're going to get into it. The first section is the AAMC account information, and it asks for your name, your first, middle, and last name. It asks for a suffix, your gender or sex. They've changed that a couple of times. Email and then your birth date. Okay, this is basic information. I usually suggest that for your email for this entire process of residency, create a separate email. I call it your hustle email because that's the email that you're going to use in networking, and I want it to be separate it from your personal email. And for professional purposes, I always recommend you use your first name, last name @ your email carrier. So whatever. That could be if you're using Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, whatever that is for you. First name, last name, @ that. mine could look like ninalum@outlook.com Because one is professional. Two, it's easily recognizable. When a program sees your email, they know who they're working This is not the time to use flygirl206@gmail.com That's not professional. It's going to make them chuckle, and they're not going to take you seriously. Right? So you're going to have your professional email created. The second benefit of having a professional email is when you get those rejection letters or we're not giving you the interview. You can separate that from your real life because you're going to get a lot of rejection throughout this process. But that doesn't define your success, that story. All right, so the next part is going to be the basic information. And so that allows you if you've changed your name, maybe for marital purposes, you could. Your previous last name or your preferred name, that's up to you. If you have a preferred name. My preferred name is same as my usual name or my official name, so I didn't really have to fill anything out in that Preferred phone. Now, if you are outside of the United States, you may have a Google number that's a US number, or you could have a US number on here. I usually recommend a US number just so that they can reach you easily. Okay. You can only put, you can put more than one phone number, but I recommend just one number is and that should be your preferred phone. It could be same as your mobile And if you don't have an alternate phone, you can also put that same number in that third slot. Okay? Now, Fax I don't really know who uses Fax these days, but they have an option there for Fax or a pager. Next will be the address Now, now, this is an area where I get a lot of questions from IMGs because some of us have more than one address, right? Like many of us maybe moved to United States and. We still have a permanent address in our home country, and then we have a current address where we live. And people always think, well, if I put a foreign address, is that going to my application to maybe be a recipient of discrimination, or would they filter me out because I have a foreign address? It does not quite work like that Your permanent address could be a foreign country. If that is true for you, there is nothing wrong with that. And then your current mailing address could be a United States address. I usually recommend that you have at least one United States address just so that if they have to communicate with you by mailing service, there is a way that they can get a hold of you. This section becomes really important after you get your Match offer because this is where they're going to extrapolate your information to send you mail. But that being said, at that point, they already have an established relationship with you, and so they'll be able to reach out to you and ask you for the preferred address So don't worry so much about what your life would be like three, four months from now, five, six months from now, one year from now, because you may move and you would have the potential to update your address with whomever you're communicating with when it comes to your residency application. So this is the first part, and all we've gone over in this section is just the basic information, your AAMC account information. Now, when it comes to gender and sex, there are so many different ideologies right now, just indicate what is generic, female, male. That's really all that they're asking for. When it comes to basic information we've gone over, that your address and your permanent versus your mailing address. So work authorization. In this section, we're going to go over some of the different categories that they provide for you. Okay, so I have it here on my computer, and I have it printed So they usually ask, are you currently authorized to work in the United States? That's. Yes or no answer, and you know best. If you are not legally authorized to work in the United States, you may have to reimagine what that could look like for you and work on that process first. So work on your immigration status But assuming everyone here is authorized to work in the United States, then that could be a yes. Now, if you are located outside of the United States, or you would require a visa, then it is a no, because what you would need is you'll need to indicate the type of visa that you are going to require later So those authorized work in the United States typically have a work authorization document, and I have a copy of that in my visa course. The work authorization document. You would know what it looks like. There's no confusion. If you have one, you know, if you do not have one, then you don't know what it looks like. If you are not authorized to work in the United States, then therefore you are going to click no. because you require a visa and then the next section pertains to you which says, will you need visa sponsorship through ECFMG such as the J one or H one B? And so that would be a yes because you do not have work authorization and so that's a for those who do have a work authorization or work permit or a green card. The they're going to click yes and not have to fill out the visa portion. So let's go over the options here because I get questions about this all the time, so I usually get questions such as if I'm going to be applying for an H1B or J1 and I'm not sure which one do I select? So you can select all that apply. So you can select an H1B and a J1. Because there are going to be some programs that offer both and they're going to be some programs that only offer one. And we will not get into the details of the difference of. Visa in this module because that's a separate course by itself. But I want you to think about if you're not certain what way you're going to go, then click both options or pick the one that you most prefer. I personally had a J1 when I did residency and then switched to an H1B when I was working toward my green card. So it's up to you to pick what works for you. Now, if you are not going if you're not going to require a visa, then you wouldn't need to be bothered with this section of the form. But they have a second tab that says if no, identify which of the following will serve as a basis for work authorization for the entirety of your GME training without any need for visa sponsorship So this is for those who are currently in the United States, maybe on some transitioning status. And so you don't need a visa because you don't have a foreign passport. Or maybe you do have a foreign passport, but you're married to a US. Citizen. You have options here. They have US Citizen. So you're a legal permanent resident or refugee. So this is for those of you who came in as a refugee or an asylee, right? So many of us from West Africa came in under a refugee or asylee status. You can click that option next to where it says US Citizen or national legal permanent resident, refugee, or asylee. You should click where you're at right now. Things could change over the next few months, and that's okay. But at the time, you were filling out this form. In order to avoid lying on a legal form, which is a crime in the United States, you want to identify where you closely relate the most. So if you are an asylee or refugee right now, you can click that option. If in three, four months, you become a permanent resident or you get an adjustment of status, or you shift into a DACA status, then, that has changed at that point in time. So you go with where you're at right this moment. Now, if you are an F1 student or an H1 worker right now, or a spouse of a J1, so you're a J2, then you have all these other options down below. If you moved into the United States as a temporary worker, an H1, then you indicate that Now if you don't fall in any of these categories, then you're going to go under Other, other means, My situation is special, and I could not identify where I fall under. So therefore, I'm going to click that and a box is going to come up for you to fill in what other means. Now, another key status that I know a lot of us have because some of us are located in the States right now, is an EAD. So that's an Employment Authorization Document that comes from the United States Citizen and Immigration Service. If you have an EAD card, this is where you're going to click. So, You don't need a visa because you already have an EAD. Even if your EAD is going to expire at a certain date, whether it's before or after you start, fact of the matter is, right in this moment, you have an EAD. So that's what you're going to click So what questions do you have? We're going to address them. You can put them down below, or you can meet us in the live session where we discuss these things in detail. But just to give you a summary of the work authorization section, first answer the question. What is my current work authorization in the United States? Is it a yes or a no? If it's a yes, you're a yes. If it's a no, you are a no Moving forward, if you are like myself and did not have that work authorization because you needed a visa sponsorship then you're going to pick what visa you will be needing for residency. Okay? You can pick J1 or H-1B or both. Or if you're uncertain. If you do not require visa because you have DACA, right? Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I went to residency with a colleague of mine who had a DACA status. He was from India and had background in Ethiopia, and so he consistently remained in DACA or under DACA status throughout his training. That is 100% acceptable. You can also pursue residency training under a diplomatic service or a child of a diplomat. That's also 100% acceptable. So there are so many different options for you. The most important thing is to remember that you are not without option. You're either going to require a visa or you're going to have another special immigration status that's going to allow you to complete your residency training. So stay tuned. We'll move on to the section.

So in this section, we're going to move into the match information. Key things to remember here, the NRMP match program is separate. It has a separate URL, a separate website, a separate platform. Then the eras, which is your eras. That's under my eras. Under your AAMC account. I know too many words, but the key thing to remember is you have to register for the NRMP entirely separately from the eras. So at your free time, I want you to look up the NRMP website. You create an account that's separate from your ERAS So in this section, they're going to ask you for your NRMP match information. And it typically starts off with, do you plan to participate in the NRMP match? For most specialties, it's a yes. If you are in a specialty, such as maybe ophthalmology or urology, they have a separate match system. So if yes, they may ask for your. They'll ask for your NRMP id, and that's where you're going to put in this information. If you don't have your NRMP ID right now, that's okay. You'll get one when the NRMP opens in the fall of the year that you apply. So they'll ask if you're participating as a couple in nrmp. This is for those participating in a couples And I get this question often. Should I participate in a couples match if I'm an IMG and my chances are already really slim? Does participating in a couples match make my chances even slimmer for matching into residency? There's no right or wrong answer. Okay. I think that if you are determined to match as a couple, then go for it. But remember, couples matching is not reserved for spouses only. You can couples match with another individual for whatever reason, friends, cousins, sisters, whatever the case may be. But if that's the case, you can indicate the person's name in that section and the specialty. If you are not choosing to participate in a couples match, you can skip that altogether and say no. If you are participating in the urology match, then you need an American Urology association member number which would have been provided to you once you became a member of that organization. Additional information they ask of you is your USMLE or ECFMG id, which you got from the ECFMG you're going to put that on there. The NBome ID does not apply to IMGs because we typically do not require. We're not the old school graduates or we're not osteopathic physicians. We're allopathic physicians, most of us that come from outside the United States are going to be mbbs, which is an allopathic designation, or an md, which is a Doctor of Medicine, which is an allopathic designation. But in the United States, you have the osteopathic designation for a physician, which is the do and they are the ones that are under the NB N B OME So that doesn't apply to us. We can skip through aoa. Membership is typically something that a lot of us as well, do not identify with because we're MD Allopathic. We do not have that membership. All acls, Paul and bls. That's Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support certification. Most of us have ACLS training, especially medical students from the Caribbean or those of you who are already in the United States and participating in observerships and clinicals and electives. Because you need to know how to resuscitate someone in the drug dead. Right? Like, you need to know what to do. And so ACLs, pause and bls, you put in your certification expiration dates on here. I get this question too as well, is, should I get the certification if I don't have it because it's going to make me more competitive? I honestly don't think that ACLs, Pauls and BLS is what's going to make you competitive as an Because once you get your job and start as a resident, part of your orientation in medical residency is dedicated to certifying you in these three things. So all interns in hospitals across the country every June, go through the last two weeks of June as orientation, and they teach them during that time how to. You get your ACLS certification, you get your PAL certification, which is the Pediatric Advanced Life Support, and you get your basic Life Support certification as well. So by virtue of that, I don't think it makes you competitive. But however, if you're already in clinicals, you should have these because you need to know the basic tenets of resuscitation. So that's why you're going to indicate what you have and when it expires. And then moving into the next section, you have this like Sigma Phi status, Alpha Omega status, or Gold Humanism Honor Society status. So these are dedicated to US Medical schools because they have these fraternities or these societies within their medical educational platform so that it allows for them to be able to gain admission into these special honorary societies. Right. That's really what they are. So IMGs, for the most part would just skip over and eras allows you to fill in and say, not available at my school or does not apply. So that's what you're going to select. next section is the biographic information, which is self identification is fairly straightforward, right? You know where you come from, you know what you identify as. And so if you are, whatever you call yourself, you're going to select that in this section. Okay, I pick African black because that represents who I am. They have options for Afro Caribbean, African American, other black, Native Hawaiian, Asian American, Hispanic. And I think they allow you to choose not to select anything. Now, the question I get often from a lot of my students and physicians that I've coached is, you know, if I self identify a certain way, is that going to lead to discrimination? Do you think that identifying that I'm black, for example, is going to make me subject to discrimination? You know, that's a great question. I wish I could say yes or no, but it's dependent on where your application falls. I would tell you though, there is a push for diversity in the workplace, in medicine right now to where I think it's actually an advantage to be of a minority group because every institution is trying to get a diverse population in their cohort at this time. It's coming in after 2020 and so many things that happened during that year. There's been a large push for minorities in medicine to where I don't think it's a disadvantage to indicate your true ethnicity because you may be that one Filipino or that one Taiwanese or that one Lay or that one Peruvian or the one Puerto Rican in their workplace, and they may be actually looking to diversify their workforce so you may actually be able to get in that way. So it's okay to identify what you truly are. Now, language fluency, this is actually a place that you'll be surprised how many people look at because depending on the community that you apply into residency for, they may have a huge Haitian community. I know a lot of the programs located around Florida, they have a huge Haitian community. So you have a lot of people that Haitian Creole and Spanish because it's just with proximity to Central and South America. So if you speak more than one language, I want you to highly indicate that in this section because what you're doing is you're putting yourself out to stand out to the programs in those areas. So programs in New York, they would like someone who can speak Spanish, English and maybe one other language, depending on what pocket of New York you find yourself Same thing. Programs In Miami and Florida, they would love a Spanish speaking person or Texas all that line around the South. They love diversity of people who can speak different languages because they have a huge population of immigrants that come and that they have to service from that particular population group. I'm recording today from Cleveland, for example, and there is a large population of different groups depending on what part of the city that you find yourself in. You may have a Ukrainian population. So if you're applying to a program that's in that neighborhood, well, and you speak Russian or Ukrainian, you may have maybe a little bit of priority there. You may be in New York and you speak Hebrew and there's a huge Jewish population there. I want you to indicate that because that's really how you stand out. Punjabi is another one where you may be in a population where there's a large pocket in New Jersey of people who speak Punjabi or other Hindi languages. So I think it's important that you indicate your language fluency. Military information is the next thing they ask you about. And usually it's if you're, if you have served in the US Military. So for those US Citizens that went to foreign medical schools, this is your chance to brag. I want you to indicate your service, indicate your time, the branch that you served under, and you describe a little bit more about your obligations, whether you're in the reserves, public health, or other state programs. Okay, I think that's really important. Now this is usually indicated as additional information, hobbies and interests. But I'll tell you, this is a very important Hobbies and interest is very important because this is the area that becomes a what do you call it? A conversational starter. Right? Like this is where people grab your application on interview day, and they start the conversation by looking at your hobbies and interests because it breaks the I've been on so many interviews where the first thing they ask me is, oh, you indicated on your hobbies that you're a writer or you're an author. Tell me about something that you wrote or what book did you publish? And that becomes like, you know, a little bit of an icebreaker conversation. Because they don't want to start with tell me about yourself or why do you think you'd be great for this job? They typically pick out your hobbies and your interests to, to lighten the mood, to get you to relax. So a lot of students will skip over the section thinking it's not important, but they've given you 510 characters. I want you to really think about something that you can list as a hobby. Now, I've coached hundreds and hundreds of physicians who say, I don't have a hobby. All I know to do is study. Right? All you do is study, eat, sleep, that's it. And they're like, I don't have a hobby. I'm like, you do have a hobby. What is that hobby? You will be surprised if your hobby is watching Sci Fi or Star Trek or whatever the things that you like to do. Well, that's what it is. Indicate that on there, because you may meet another nerd just like you who can identify with you and be like, yeah, that's something I like to do. Or if you like playing chess, video games, whatever. The thing is that you do when you're not working, this is your place to put it. I also have other This is usually with women that I've coached. They'll say, really, my only hobby is cooking or yoga. Great, put that on there. Because if your hobby is cooking, that may be your interviewer's hobby. But I think you should have a twist to it. Right? Just don't put cooking. Your hobby could be cooking with a specialty in Indian cuisine or African food or whatever that could be. Give a little bit more of a description so that you stand out. So when you go over the case study module, you're going to see some of how we've addressed hobbies that could sound so mundane and so simple, but you can put a twist to it. Some people say photography is my hobby. Well, maybe you're not a professional, but what kind of photography? Landscape photography. Okay, then indicate landscape if you're an artist. Okay, I am. I love art. What? Well, have you created an art and displayed it at some museum in town? Well, indicate that on there. I create canvas art and have displayed once at the Museum of Modern Art, even if it was 10 years ago. Okay. But that was your one achievement in the art world that you can use on your application to showcase that it is indeed a true hobby. Now, it may not be a hobby that you participate in every day, which is why they give you the opportunity to indicate interest. So if you have an interest in something, maybe, and you haven't had a chance to explore it, hiking or skiing, but you are maybe an amateur level, you can indicate that as an interest. Interested in skiing, taking ski lessons, currently, whatever that could look like for you. And then the last part is the hometown section, where it's really straightforward. You're going to indicate your hometown and mine stays the same every single day. Because, I mean, you know where you come from. And so you're going to put that on there. So that's bringing us to the end of this section. We're going to move into the education section next, and I want you to come back well prepared for that.

All right, so welcome back. Now, we're going to go into the education section. This is really, really important. I know I say this all the time. Every section of your application is important, but your education obviously is very important. So we're going to start with what the form asks of you. They ask of higher education. Now, they actually spell it out for you on there. They say, this section allows multiple entries for each undergraduate and graduate school that you have attended. Now, since most US or NON-US. Educational systems don't have the classic undergraduate versus graduate school, it's important that you realize that your work that you've done is still valuable. It's still important. So what ends up happening is this. I get students that have coached in the past who say, you know, I finished high school and I went straight into medical school. It was a six year curriculum, a seven year curriculum in Russia or in Ukraine or in India or in Pakistan. And so I don't have undergraduate work, you do have undergraduate work. It was included inside of your six, seven year curriculum, but it's just not called that. And that is perfectly okay. You don't need to indicate undergraduate work on your application because it's understood worldwide that the United States has a different educational system from the rest of the world. So if you come from a six seven year medical school curriculum, perfectly okay. Just indicate that as one entry in your form so that could look like institution, for example, Agakan Medical Center in Pakistan, right? And so you're going to pick that institution, location, education type, field of study, degree earned, and the month you started, the year you started, and the year you ended. Okay. That's it. It's that simple, right? Now, if you did a master's degree before that medical education, or after that medical education, or during that. Time, every degree that you obtained as a separate degree that you represent on your CV on a normal day will have a separate entry. So what do I mean by that? A Bachelor's of arts, a Bachelor's of science, a Master's of Arts, a Master's of Science, a Master's of Public health, a Master's of Business administration. All this degree programs are indicated as separate entries when it comes to the education form, if you are in medical school in the Caribbean, for example, that's what I did. I went to medical school in the Caribbean, and I had a four year program, right? And so that was an MD program separate from a bachelor's program that I obtained from my home country. So my bachelor's program then is is one separate entry. My medical program is a separate Now, while I've been in the United States, I started a master's of business administration, right? I didn't finish it. Quit. Now. Did I earn a degree from it? No. So that would be a third entry, but it would say where it goes to degree expected or earned. It's a no, because I did not earn a degree, and neither is a degree expected, but I want to represent that coursework. Okay, so it's important that you differentiate, what have I accomplished in my life up until now that was given to me by an institution of higher education. So was that a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, or an MD degree or an MBBS degree or even a PhD. I have some students in my program who have had PhDs from another country. They have a PhD in nutrition science, a PhD in public health in education, whatever the case may be. And now they're pursuing medical education. So this is where you're going to enter all that information. Just make sure that every degree program is represented separately as a line item on its own with its designated star. And stop dates. That's very, very important. Now, so we talked about education, and I did include medical education in that talk. But in your eras form, I want to highlight something. They have a separate section for undergraduate and graduate schools as a separate entry, and then medical school as a separate So this first section is for your undergraduate and your graduate. So that's your master's and your bachelor's degrees. Now then you have your medical education section, which is a whole separate entry. And it allows for you to put in your country the institution, name, the degree, name the month, the year, the dates of education, months and years, when you started and when you ended. So it's important that you designate this. Now, I get this question often, is I have more than one medical school in my portfolio. You were not alone, trust me. Before I moved to the United States, I made some mistakes. I had two medical schools in my application form as well. And that is for transferring from one school to another school on a separate on two different islands. So when it came to this question, I had to put in two separate entries because I attended two separate medical institutions and so that looked like my school one was my entry one But then I did not obtain my medical degree from that school. So I had a second entry where I did obtain my medical degree. So it's not wrong if you've had a disjointed medical education journey. You just need to be able to represent that accurately on your form, another thing they ask for additional information, it's surprising that they put it there as additional information because it's very important information and becomes information that you get asked about during your interviews. It's memberships and medical school awards and other awards and This is so important for so many reasons. Memberships become a way for you to network, right? So when you are actively pursuing residency, you join an organization. I hope you're joining an organization that is the organization in the specialty of your interest. What does that mean? You're interested in internal medicine and becoming an internist. You want to join the American College of Physicians as a student member, international member, or, you know, graduate member, whatever the case may be, whatever options you're being provided, what that would do for you is it just says that I am staying abreast with important updates on internal medicine by virtue of being a member of this organization. So that allows for networking opportunities, but more so, it allows it represents your commitment to the specialty. Commitment to the specialty is one of the key area that program directors look at when selecting applicants to invite for interviews. There are ten key areas. One of them is commitment to the specialty. Commitment to the specialty. Can be shown in so many different arenas, and we talk about that in module 2 But for the purpose of your ERAS form, your membership in the professional society of your clinical interest and application is very important. So if you're interested in emergency medicine, being a member of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine or American College of Emergency Physicians ASAP is very important because that shows your commitment to the specialty. That's one reason it's important. We talk about the other reasons that membership is important inside of module 2 So your commitment to the specialty is super important. That's where you're going to represent the specialties that you are a member of the professional societies, the honorary societies in that box, the next thing they ask of you is your medical school awards. And people often tell me, I didn't get any awards, I didn't get any designations or whatnot. Were you the best student in anatomy did? Get awarded for that? Did you get recognized for that? Did you gain a scholarship? Maybe you got a couple of $1,000 shaved off of your tuition for maintaining a certain GPA. I think that could be represented on Now, if you feel like it was not a designated award where there wasn't a plaque given to you and there wasn't an applause around it, then you can obviously it or putting that under other awards/accomplishments. So that could be Best Student in whatever the case may be. So that is just another area that you can leverage. Okay? So many of us forget that we have done work, especially those of you who did a six, seven year curriculum. You forget that you got an award second or third year, fourth year, fifth So I want you to dig deep. I want you to peel back the curtain and look back at your life and say, where was I awarded? What right, and how can I represent that on my application? That is super important. Important because if you think about it these programs have never met you All that they have is a piece of paper on their desk given to them from you And so they have to look through this piece of paper and make a decision about you and make a decision about your future and make a decision about your medical career. So what are you putting on paper that accurately describes your commitment to the specialty That's the question you really have to answer Because if you are not capturing this data well, who's going to capture it for you This is sort of like an expanded curriculum vitae. It's an expanded CV. So this is not the time to be shy or reserved with your accomplishments. This is the time to dig deep and pull out all the work that you've done, those experiences that you've accomplished, and represent that on your form. Okay, so next we're moving on into training. This is usually reserved for if you have completed residency in the United States. So you've done a PGY-1 year, which is a postgraduate year one, which is the equivalent of internship in the United States. If you have completed any of such it could be an AOA internship, a fellowship or an ACGME residency And students often ask me, how do I know if I've done that? If you did that, you would know because you would have been informed and granted some kind of completion certificate So if you have done an ACGME residency, they also have RCPS/UCNS fellowship, then you can indicate that on here regardless of the time spent in training. So this is where if you did internship at the Cleveland Clinic, for example. Then you would say type of training. I did one year internship here. And you put the institution the address, date. Of your fellowship and the reason for leaving. A lot of my students in the past get hung up on reason for leaving because they worry if reason for leaving means they quit Your reason for leaving could be as simple as completion. So you may have graduated, completed, successfully completed. And when you go over the section where I talked to you about the general guidelines for filling out your form, we talk about using action verbs throughout the application. So one of the things that you want to do is you want to say and you want to use words like successfully completed. You want to use graduated from program completed prerequisites so that it gives a full 360 understanding of the fact that your work was indeed done Now, if you left the program prematurely for a personal reason, then that's where you would include departed from program due to family obligations. Or completed program or suspended program due to visa obligations. But your reason for leaving could be as simple as the true reason that encapsulates why you had to leave the program or why you completed or how you completed the program. So they give you more than one entry for that. If you have more than This is also for those who are reapplying those you know. You can also use Now, the next section usually asks about description, right? So they ask you if you've had any clinical and teaching experience that you add toward work experience. So when it comes to experiences, there are two key types of experiences. You have your work experience and you have your volunteer experience. Okay, so I should say this in the preceding few minutes, I just talked about training in general. And that was medical training. And then you have work experience, and then you have volunteer Work experience. Typically, they're asking for work that you have completed as part of a job, so you were enrolled in a paid job. Anything that was not paid, in my opinion, is typically a volunteer. But you also have some teaching experiences, some clinical work that was maybe unpaid, but you can include under work experience. So clinical work that you can include under work experience could be electives that you did outside of your designated medical course curriculum or observerships that you completed outside of your designated work curriculum. So you graduated medical school already. You're a physician, and you move to the states to one month or two months of observership. Then you can capture that under your work experience if you did an externship. So hands on observership, you can also capture that under your work experience. Now, if you volunteer at a children's hospital because you want to be a pediatrician, and you do that once or twice a week, then that goes under your volunteer experience. And in a separate section where I walk you through the general guidelines to address this form, we'll go in detail as to how to describe each experience. But we're just doing an overview here. So you gather an idea of what to put where this key question oftentimes gets people in a state of panic And why does it do that? Because they ask you, was your education or training extended or interrupted? And if there is one thing that makes us doctors insecure is when we feel like we are not part of the standard or part of the mould. Okay? Because you're competing with graduates from Harvard University and Yale, and they have Georgetown behind their name. Or they have Case Western behind their name. And so you may feel like, oh, man, my medical education is not as streamlined as a person who graduated from Case. Right? That may be your argument, but this is actually an opportunity for you to give the person reviewing your application insight as to why your education is So for those who transfer medical or who had to take a leave of absence, this is where you're going to indicate that. So I'll give you an example. I was one of those people who had a leave of absence and transferred medical schools. So what I did was I took it upon myself to use this section to explain why that I typically recommend that you keep it as short as possible. They give you about 510 characters max, so this is not the time to talk about and then the dog died and the cat died, and everything happened after that. None of that. This is where you're going to factually explain what happened. Okay. Medical education was interrupted due to the war in Ukraine. Because maybe you were in medical school in Ukraine. Or medical education was extended due to requiring to change visa status, which was my case. I had to stop each time to make sure my visa was up to date with the immigration service so I could continue to legally be in the United States. And so you indicated, factually, this is not the time for your emotions. Yes, it makes you feel sad, but nobody really cares, to be honest But more importantly, they don't need to know that. They just want to know why your education was interrupted or extended. For those of you who transferred medical schools, it could look I transferred medical schools or transferred medical schools for better educational opportunity or transferred medical schools in order to obtain better clinical rotation site. It's that simple. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be Keep your emotion away from it. Yes, it makes you sad. Yes, it was a difficult time in your life, but what they're asking you is one question was your education interrupted, extended, or was your training interrupted or extended? And that's all they want to know. Okay? So just fill it out as such Now, the next section that they want you to fill out is licensure. And licensure usually is reserved for those who have prior license So if you've never had a medical license in the United States, then you don't have to worry about this, right? And most of us, if not all of us, have never had state medical licensure, so we don't have to worry about it at all And they have additional information, which is if your license has been revoked or suspended or terminated. And that's always a no for us because we've never really had to do that, if you have been involved in a malpractice case maybe you were working at a physician's office, and the physician was listed in a case And your name came up in the case then they have a question about that. If you've been named in a malpractice case they want you to indicate that A lot of us have not been named in malpractice cases. But if you're that individual that has, then you want to make sure you show that. Because the last thing you want them doing is running a background check and finding out that you have been involved in a malpractice case before but you did not or you've failed to represent that. That doesn't look good on you. It says that you're not being truthful, and that always is a room for doubt So they also ask, is there anything in your history that would limit your ability to be licensed Most of us are going to be a no. Right? So it's going to be a no for a majority of us. Or they ask if you've been convicted of a misdemeanor in the United States If it's a yes, you just have to indicate I know people who have had misdemeanors, maybe when they were in high school, petty theft or things like that. Yeah. You just have to indicate that and explain what happened. If it was something that you did as a minor, you may want to indicate that this was something that was part of you being younger Now, the last section asked if you've had a conviction as a felony in the United States, and that's either yes or no. And they asked if you're able to carry the specific requirements for training. That's a yes or no, which all of us is going to always be a yes A lot of us are not yet board certified, so we have to skip the question that asked about our board certification. And then your DEA, obviously, is something you get when you start training, not even when you start training, when you start practice. So you have a lot of time to get a DEA. So that would be a no. But if you were already in training before, like you're writing into fellowship, then you may have a DEA registration number, that brings us to the end of this section. And remember, we're going to have a separate section where we're going to go through the general guidelines for filling out the specific experience that will be a separate section within this module. So I want you to make sure you watch that as well, because it'll be lengthy if we include it on here. So come back for that, okay?

Alright? So welcome back. This section also very important. I know I keep saying that every time you come back. This section is very important because it is everything's important today. So we're gonna go over publication and I want you to just take some time out and just hear me out, okay? Because some people get really caught up on this thinking about randomized control trials and bench research and having to dedicate two, three years of their life in a research chair in order to feel the need or the ability or the confidence to fill this section out. And that's not the case. Absolutely not. Because guess what? When you start residency in the United States, it's the beginning of your medical career. What do I mean by that? The expectation is that you will become the kind of clinician mission that can produce research. So they're not expecting you to come in with everything under your belt They're expecting you to come in with a teachable attitude, a mindset that is ready to learn. Like we talked about in module one, the Mindset module, a growth mindset that is open to being taught and impressed upon in order to become a viable clinician. So what they want to know is that you have a general understanding of research. They want to grasp that you are someone that is willing and able to participate in research, someone that may just need a little bit of mentorship and guidance from your volunteers, your preceptors or volunteer staff That's what they want from you So in this publication section, they're going to ask you to list out certain accomplishments. And I will tell you right now that the basic medical student in the United States does at least two to three, on average publications or papers or posters or presentations. Now, I would also say I've worked with medical students because I've had the opportunity to teach Osteopathic medical students when I used to work in Kentucky, and a lot of them did not have the opportunity, especially during the year of the pandemic when it started, they did not have the opportunity to participate in research. So even if you don't have research, it has been my experience that I've seen IMGs match without research. I have seen medical students match without research. So I don't want you to feel like you must have research in order to match. But however, it does make you competitive. There's actually some information put out by the NRMP when they study applicants. They can tell they've been able to extrapolate between the matched versus the unmatched and the average number of research papers that each of them had. And when I went through that document, because it's cumbersome, and I don't think you need to go over every single part of it, but the average number was about two to three. Most applicants come in with about two to three items that they can include. Under this publication section. So what that means for you is you may have one or two or you may have ten publications, but either way, the key point is that you have a general understanding of research. So that when you are in residency or in fellowship, you'll be able to reproduce some amount of research work that will make you valuable for a program or even for clinical work or in the entire medical landscape as a whole So they give you this opportunity to add each of your publications, starting with peer reviewed journal articles and One of the key questions I get all the time is how do I know my article is peer reviewed? Okay, the key way to know there are several ways. There are some websites you can actually go on Google and type how to verify if an article is peer reviewed. And it will bring up a website where you can actually put in the publication, and it would tell you if it is peer reviewed or not. That's. an easy way But the second is the journal in which it was reviewed or published in typically would tell you if it's a peer reviewed journal or not So the platform that you used to publish your article is the best place to verify whether your article is peer reviewed or not. They can tell you. So what do I mean by that? If you published in the American Academy of Pediatrics. Well, obviously that's peer reviewed, but if you publish in a smaller scale journal, paperback, article, online URL platform, you may want to ask them, is this considered peer reviewed work? But oftentimes medical journals, especially the higher name, the BMJ, the NEJM, ACP, AMP, anything that has to do with a professional society, typically is peer reviewed. So they ask for peer reviewed information. They want you to put the publication name the authors. So even if you are not the first author. You can, however, include your work So maybe you were the fifth author on the paper. The key point is you were a part of that work, and you were listed, if you did work and you, however, were not listed, obviously I understand how unfair that could be at times. And sometimes, as IMGs, we find ourselves in scenarios where we do work, and then they don't list us in the final publication. It happens, right? I've assisted on research papers before where I was never listed. But you know what? I gained a lot of learning from it. I was able to learn how key researchers were coming up with their question and how they answered to where, even if I wasn't included in the final paper, to where I can't take credit for it, that's okay, because guess what? On my volunteer experience section, I can, however, include that I did volunteer on a research project. Okay? So even if you don't find that you have the opportunity to grasp your name on a peer review paper or have your name attached to peer reviewed paper, you can include that work that you did as a research project. Okay, so peer reviewed journals, and they asked for the issue number, the pages, the month, the year. So this is something that you would have to have if you had it. So if you were in a peer reviewed journal, you'll know, and you'll be able to represent it on the next item peer reviewed journals other than published. So meaning it's still in the works. Okay, maybe it's been submitted, maybe it's not yet been published, but it's been approved. That's where they want you to indicate that as well. Some of you may have participated in a book chapter. So you wrote a book. You wrote a chapter in a and it's a peer reviewed book, a textbook. Maybe back home, maybe while you were in faculty in your home country, you wrote a book chapter. This is where you can put that on Or maybe you did a scientific monograph. This would be another key area. And if you wrote a scientific monograph, you would know, because you know what that means and so you'd be able to represent it And then they have other articles which a lot of us have written several small scale articles. We've written articles that publish in health magazines or articles that were published in maybe our local school magazine or an article that didn't go far. Right. It was part of our local school's research day. I think that's where you can capture that information is under 'Other' so there are so many examples for other articles and we'll go through that in the case study as well and you'll see some samples and examples as well. Poster Presentation I think a poster presentation is the easiest presentation or the easiest scholarly activity that you can gather for the purpose of your ERAS. And the reason I say that is as a medical student or as a clinician, you have seen several cases to where you can select a case that you can do a case report on and then have a poster made out of it. Obviously, the posters presentations that they speak about here are typically poster presentations that were done and presented at medical conferences across the country. So that would mean you went to a medical conference and you presented a poster in person. That's really what they're asking. Also, when they talk about oral presentations, ideally they're asking for podium presentations at such conferences. So maybe you wrote a case report on the case of someone with Lupus who also had another rare complication of Lupus, and you submitted that case report to a medical conference. They accepted it, you went over there, you presented it on podium. Then you can put that as a poster presentation or an oral presentation. Now, I get this question often because some of you have oral presentations, like part of grand rounds at a large academic center. I do believe, yes, that you can represent your oral presentation done at a ground round as a part of your oral presentation. Now, the presentations that you did on a day to day basis while walking the wards with your group of attending and your other co-residents or co-students, that's typically not what they're asking for. But if you did some kind of structured grand rounds, some kind of structured morning report rounds where you presented in front of everyone and had to take some time to research the literature, to create that article, to create that presentation, then I believe that you can also capture. For those of you who have completed medical programs in other countries. And you have done a thesis, right? So you wrote a thesis at the end of your MD degree, your MBBS degree, MBCH degree, you can capture your thesis work as well under other publication or other articles if you did have to defend it. So some of you do this thing where you have to defend in front of a faculty group that. Could be a poster as well, or an oral as well. But I think you should only represent it one time. So if you're putting it under other articles because it was published or under peer reviewed because it was peer reviewed your dean and the faculty members, then you're only going to put it there once. You can't have it in multiple locations. I believe that that's redundant. So the next section that they give you an upper changes to represent is the peer reviewed online publication. A peer reviewed online publication is just the same as a peer review paper print. The only difference is it's online. So there are some peer review articles that are only available online and so this is where you're going to represent that and they ask for the link. So if you're going to put your information of an online publication, be ready to also provide the link so that they can copy it and paste it into a browser and be able to find your publication. Now they have a section for non peer review online. Publication, which is appear again. Peer reviewed means it was reviewed by a peer from the same specialty. In our case, it would be, for example, if I was applying for plastic surgery residency, it would be reviewed by other plastic surgeons So they review my article and they approve the material that's in there to be up to standard with general acceptable practice. So if you have a non peer reviewed online publication, meaning it was not reviewed by peers in that specialty, this is where it falls. And many of us are going to have articles that are non peer reviewed because that's a lot easier to achieve. So in this program, when you're doing live program with me, we talk about publishing on STATPEARLS or CUREUS, which is C-U-R-E-U-S. We talk about publishing online on these platforms to gain publication experience, where we have scholarly work to put on here, this is where some of that work can be represented. So. This takes you away from thinking, I must have a randomized control trial as my research work, to thinking, how can I get something as simple as an online publication that I can publish on one of these non peer reviewed online platforms, right? So I think this is an easy, easy way for Caribbean medical students, for IMGs, to gain some level of experience and some level of publication without having to go through an IRB process which our institutions, unfortunately, have not provided for So, in summary, what are we saying In summary, when it comes to publications, you can, if you have RCTs, you have done, by all means, list that on there. If you've written a metaanalysis, you wrote a cross sectional survey. You did a case report, okay? You did any kind of scientific monograph, you wrote a cross sectional survey. Whatever that could be for you that you have done, please represent that somewhere on this form. And if you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to help you clarify during our in person sessions as well. So just make sure right now that you sit down and think about every scholarly activity that you whether it was at Research Day, whether it was grand rounds, whether it was in a local health magazine. You wrote a column for a magazine such I'm thinking, the New York Times or Essence or something of that nature. Is that a non peer reviewed online publication? Yes, it is. Can you capture that and put it in your application? Absolutely. Did you do a case report that you presented at a local ACP chapter meeting? Yes, you did? So can you put that under oral presentation? Absolutely. Did you do a small scale case survey, cross sectional survey of people at a local clinic and you decided to present that at the AAFP? A national meeting. Yes, that is work that you can go as poster presentation or oral presentation. There's opportunity there for So stop thinking that this has to be a randomized control trial that gets published in the New England Journal of Medicine because you will be deceived. But think of it more so as how can I get some scientific work that shows I have an understanding of research in general. So that brings us to the end of the publication section. And as I said before, when we were going through the case review section or case study section, you will see examples that we walk through from a real life application that you can apply. The last section is the certification and they basically ask if everything you have described in your application is complete and accurate and to the best of your knowledge, they want to make sure that you are not committing any false information to them or submitting any false information to them, because that is perjury. Right? We don't want to do that And so when you click that button, you're basically saying, I do certify that everything I provided you in this section is true and to the best of my knowledge, is real and actual and factual. And when you click that button, you're saying, I do certify that I've represented the truth of my medical career thus far. And so when you do that, I want you to keep that in mind. Thank you for hanging out with me in this module and walking through the US application with me. It was my pleasure to help you. And I'll see you in the in person section.

Welcome back. Today we're going to focus on the Experiences section inside of the ERAS application So you have probably gone through the entire method on how to fill out the form, or maybe you're still working through that. But I decided to keep this as a separate section because I want you to pay close attention to this in particular, what I'm going to teach you here is I'll teach you a method as to how to fill out the Experiences section And by Experiences section, what I mean is where they ask for work experience, where they ask for volunteer experience, where they ask for clinical experience or teaching experience. This is what I'm referring to So this is very simply that box that you're given. You're given a nice rectangle and you're asked to fill in descriptions of each experience that you have So I hope you know exactly what I'm talking about when you are filling out your form. They ask for the experience type, the position, your supervisor, the location, the average hours per week And then they give you a description section, which is a rectangle, about 1000 characters max. And they want you to describe each of those experiences. That's what we're working on today. So right here in this section, you'll be learning how to describe each experience individually. Following this method, I'm going to show All right? So before I go into it, we're going to go over some general rules for filling out experiences and filling out this form in general, the first key rule is you're going to use the active voice, not the passive voice. Okay. You're are going to avoid using the first person. So you wouldn't say, I started the rotation at the Cleveland Clinic, right? You would say Completed twelve week rotation at Cleveland Clinic. There's a big difference there. One was very much using the first person and the other was very much using a passive voice as opposed to an active voice Okay? So we're going to eliminate the use of the first person. That's the first key point. The second point is we're going to use an active voice, not a passive voice. The third thing we're going to do is we're going to be honest in filling out this section because we're not going to make it look like we did more than what we did or less than what we did. We're going to accurately encapsulate and describe that experience. Now, the key area to think about here is how you describe And that is where I want you to think about action verbs. Okay? So action verbs are really easy words that you can use to impress any manager, any. Wear any day, anytime because it does very simple work, okay? It conveys the act of doing something. Okay? So you could say she walked to the door or the dog chased the ball, right? But that's very vague, okay, because it doesn't really describe anything. But when you point out what your responsibilities were, what you coordinated, what you created, what you executed, that makes a big difference between someone who makes a competitive applicant and someone who is passive in their Are you following with Some action verbs obviously are stronger than others. Led means you led something. You were a leader. Handled means you just participated in it. Okay? So when you use an action verb like led, it's obviously more superior to handled. Okay? So no matter what you're trying to do. You need to make sure that in your description section, you are avoiding the use of the first person and you're kicking it off with an action verb. Okay, so a few action verbs that leaders would use. For example would be administered, chaired, coordinated, led, directed, et, executed, headed, managed, operated, orchestrated, oversaw, planned, produced, programmed, spearheaded. So it's one thing if I say I participated in the IMG RoadmapⓇ Program It's another thing if I say I executed, delegated and led the IMG RoadmapⓇ program. There is an authority with the second method of describing Now, maybe. Being honest, as I've encouraged you to you maybe did not lead and so you participated. Participated is an action verb. And so you can definitely use that in your description because it accurately describes what you did. All Other things that you can think about is maybe you are a founder. You came up with an idea and you brought it your supervisor and then it fleshed out into this great thing and so you can't take full credit for it by yourself. So other action verbs you may use are designed, developed, founded, engineered, formed, formulated, initiated, introduced, proposed, pioneered. So if I pick up a CV and you have someone that says I participated in a twelve week rotation at Mayo Clinic. great. Everybody participated in the twelve week rotation somewhere. But it's different. If I say I led a twelve program at the Mayo Clinic under the Department of XYZ, okay? It's factual, it's comprehensive, and every statement or sentence in that description box must be a full sentence on his own. And be very descriptive of what you're trying to convey. So I've said a few things already, and I want you to grasp this with me because this is the method you're going to use every single time you're filling out a CV from now until the end of your life, okay? So what that would look like is you're going to avoid the use of the first person. So no I's, My's, Me's, none of that We're going to use action verbs, okay? The second thing I said and then the third thing I said is we're going to speaking in an active tone, not a passive tone. So when you read the document out loud to yourself, is that an active voice? A passive voice? The fourth thing is we're going to quantify our experiences. So it makes a big difference if you say, I, No I's, right? Participated in twelve week rotation at Mayo Clinic in the Department of Endocrinology. That is factual. You're quantifying, you give them a time frame of twelve weeks. You gave them the location, you gave them your role in it using an action verb And so when you do it that way by itself, there is no doubt in the reader's mind what you are trying to represent on that form So that being said, you're going to use that same approach where each line carries an action verb, a quantification, or you're quantifying the experience, and then you're given a little more detail as to what it entailed. That makes you more competitive because it shows your strength, it shows your duration, your commitment. It. It shows how you led or what your role exactly was in that job or that clinical experience or that volunteer Okay. Other things that you can consider maybe you weren't leader, right? We've established that you were just a But you can definitely say you helped that project be more efficient, right? Maybe because you didn't And so you facilitated that's an action verb you may use in that scenario. Or you accelerated. So this person was going to produce a research paper and they were doing it on their own. You came on the project, and guess what you did? You accelerated results. And so you accelerated the result of that person producing that publication because you were an assistant to their project So you still had a vital role in it just didn't lead it Another thing you can say is you boosted. Right? I boosted the clinical service line for CDI Documentation. Okay. Or maybe you advanced something So these are all action verbs that when you put on your CV, the reader is able to factually understand your role And therefore they're looking at you and saying, well, when they come to my program, maybe they'll accelerate our work in research. Or maybe she or he would amplify the work that we're doing in our community service, our community outreach programs. Because that's what you did in your volunteer experience. You said, I amplified the work of the Red Cross during the pandemic by checking or testing for COVID-19 in underserved communities So maybe you can actually quantify that and say, I amplified. NO I's, no first person. My mistake. Amplified the work of the Red Cross in identifying new cases of COVID-19 in an underserved area over the period of twelve Right. Or maybe you were an assistant Right on a community project that goes out door to door. You do home visits Assisted home visit appointments for patients who could not transport to medical center. So you want to be very specific in your role when you come to describe your experience other things you can consider. Let's talk about some other action verbs. Deducted, gained, generated, improved, increased, lifted, maximized. That's another thing. Maybe you're never a leader. Maybe you're kind of like the fly on the wall in the back of the room. But you could say you maximize the project because you brought in a skill set that they did not have You volunteered at the children's hospital. Maybe you volunteer in check in, so you facilitate patient care. So you're taking in names for everybody coming into the children's hospital that day. And you may think, well, nobody cares. That's not great work. Well, what if you say you facilitated care? For cancer patients at Nationwide Children's Hospital That is an accurate description because you facilitated their entry into the facility. You get them to where they need to sign in and check in for their cancer treatment for the That's way better than, say, I participated in volunteer work at Nationwide Children's. Well, what did you do there? So other keywords that we can use and there are so many others on the Internet, go on the Internet, type in Merriam Webster's Dictionary, put in action verbs. Or you type in action verbs, even on Google these days, and you'll find so many options. Merge is another one. Maybe you brought together, refined, redesigned. So some of you have been working as a medical assistant at a clinic, maybe. And you walked into the clinic and you redesigned patient flow. So patients walk in through this door. They check in, they sit here, they fill their forms, they see the doctor. They check out, and you are part of that process. So you're working as a medical assistant. So in your CV, you would say redesigned the patient care flow system for private practice that saw over 1200 patients a month You have quantified your service, so the number of people that your work did reach. You have used an action verb to describe the work that you did without necessarily getting into the nuances of the day to day work. Standardized. Streamlined. Strengthened. Transformed. Update. Upgraded. Enabled. Facilitated. It's a pretty common one. When I review applications every year, I see facilitated often, and I think it's a great word to use, because sometimes we're just not the leader. Supervised if you were a supervisor at her job, you could definitely use that. Taught if you're a teacher. Trained. If you teach people If you were a school coach, for example, you coach junior league or whatever the case may be, coached is another word you could use. Mentored is another great, great word, especially medicine. We all live by having a Mentor. That's how we advance our careers. Mentor is a great word. Maybe your role was a little bit light hearted. Maybe it was a community service that you did, and you're trying to describe that. And so you could say you mobilized patients. Right? You mobilized the crowd, or you recruited patients to enroll in a clinical trial right? So those are all descriptive words that you can So before before we get lost in action verbs, let's get back to what we're talking about In the experience section. The method you're going to use okay? And you're going to replicate this method. I 100% believe in teaching people methods so that they can replicate it when I'm not there Because if you don't have a system, then you're not able to reproduce the same results when you don't have the coach there with you So this is the method you're going to use. And I use it till date every time I'm updating my CV for a new job or a new gig or a new speaking event or new speaking engagement. Go in there and I update using this method, I do not use the passive voice. I always use the active voice. It says authority. I always avoid the first person, so there's no I's or My's or Me's in my CV or any kind of application form. I always start each line item with an action verb, and I make my sentences short and concise. And I ensure that if my sentence each sentence was extrapolated from the page, it would accurately have a meaning of its own as a standalone sentence. And I do this even with your personal statements as well And then I quantify, because there is a big difference between a person who sees 5 patients a day and a person who sees 50 patients a day Okay? There is a big difference between if you run 1 mile or you run a marathon So you should quantify your experiences using numbers. Metrics. Metrics would take you a long way because we all understand system, we all understand metrics. When you use numbers, you're able to quantify the work that you did and then we make sure that we separate these items. Now, students ask me all the time, should I use bullet points or paragraph And I think what you should be more focused in is clear and concise communication. You could communicate in bullet points. I prefer bullet points because it appears neat on a piece of paper. And I usually keep my experiences about three to five sentences, so that could be three to five bullet points. And I try to make them symmetric so I don't have one experience that's ten bullet points, and then another experience that's three bullet points, another one, that's one bullet I try to keep them three to five under each item There is no right way you can have ten bullet points if that represents the work that you did. But I'm telling you what I recommend, okay? And if you choose to use paragraphs, then just make sure it's. neat. Make sure it's legible. Make sure your communication is clear. Now, another key item to remember is the font sizing. And the appearance on the page would be whatever ERAS recommends for it to be. But punctuation is very important. I've edited so many CVs and you wonder who gave these people a medical degree, right? How can you fill this out without proper punctuation? So if you are submitting an application for a professional job, like a residency position, your punctuation must be accurate What do I mean by that? If there is a period or a full stop, you must follow with an uppercase letter when you start the next sentence If you end a sentence, there must be a period or a full stop. Use your comma and use them appropriately. So I've had people capitalize. Non-nouns in the middle of a sentence. When that is not accurate, the noun should be capitalized anywhere, but not the full word. Just the first letter of the noun requires capitalization. So please consider the basic tenets of punctuation, because that could be a turn off if your application fell on the lap of maybe an old school physician who is just a little bit stuck in their ways, they may not take it lightly that you have a punctuation error So, in summary, when filling out your experiences on ERAS I want you to use examples that use the active voice, that employ action verb that quantify your experiences and make them as legible, concise and short as possible. Three to five sentences per experience, whether that's a work experience or a volunteer experience So I'm going to give you some examples today. Example number one maybe it's a pathology resident and they're saying I served as forensic pathology assistant on over 1000 biopsies. Okay? That could be transformed into "Served as forensic pathology assistant on over or on 150 autopsies for the pathology department at XYZ." Okay? So we just took out in that example, all we did was we took out first person, the I, and made the sentence start with the action verb We quantified by listing the number of autopsies. And if the location wasn't already indicated on the top of the application section, then you can indicate that on here as well. The next example could be. Students tend to write this. They'll say open quote, "My roles included, Completing tasks for the primary pathologist, such as preparing tissue samples, labeling, data collection, and entry. Well, that could be truncated into "Daily roles included preparing tissue samples, labeling, data entry, and collection." Okay. And that just captures the work you did without the redundancy of the first person. Then I always recommend, at the very end, maybe your fifth point or your fifth sentence could be a lesson learned. And it doesn't have to say, I learned this It must describe, however, skill sets that you obtained, and that will be valuable for your future residence position that you're looking at So that could look like "During this five months basic tenets learned include bridging the gap for community as a whole by serving in medicine, or bridging the gap between law enforcement and medical providers. And so, really, a lesson learned is just a sentence that drives home how that experience was beneficial to your pathway into residency. And so that could look like so many different things. The final and most important point is use numbers, quantify, qualify, describe, and end with a lesson learned All right? You need to clearly communicate, be effective in your communication, be concise, and always avoid the use of first person. What you should always use are your action verb. Thank you for hanging out with me in this section. I think this is probably the most important section of the entire ERAS module, so watch it more than one time and make sure that you really, truly understand what we're looking at today. And when we go over the case studies, I want you to pay close attention to the critique. On those case studies as well. Thank you.

So you've made it to the very end of module seven. Congratulations. I am so proud of you for sticking it out and paying attention to every section of this module. You've learned today. And I want to go over what you've learned today because I think it's important in adult learning, they always teach us, you know, you teach us, tell us what you're going to teach us. You teach us and then you tell us how, what we learned, and that's what we're going to So today you learned how to fill out your ERAS form. We talked about using action verbs and fitting experiences exactly where they belong. You learn the importance of the form and how to address it and where to find a free printable download that's made available to you by the AAMC. You also heard a case study today on actual cases and forms that we looked at as to what they look like when they're generated into the PDF format. And more importantly, I gave you general guidelines as to how to address each line item and specific. Descriptions under experiences. And those experiences could be voluntary experiences, work experiences, teaching experiences, clinical experiences, rotations, electives, observerships, externships, audition rotations, whatever you choose to capitalize them under. The key item here is I want you to present yourself as the most competitive version of who you could be. For programs to be able to see that on paper and be attracted enough to want to meet you in person, I know for a fact. Because in doing this for dozens and hundreds of other IMGs they have been able to position themselves to match into residency. And you will be no different to your success. Here is to creating your medical success story. Thank you

Welcome to this session on filling out your ERAS application.

You will need to watch this twice, once now and then again when you are ready to fill your application.

 This is what the application ends up looking like, and this is just a PDF format. 

You will fill out form fields on the AAMC’s ERAS website and the information will be converted into a PDF.

The PDF can be saved and shared with your mentors who will review your application for feedback.

Remember not to submit until you are ready and have completed your application.

Usually, it starts off with the first page, which is your general application information. 

Your name, date of birth, address, AAMC ID, your USMLE ID, your email, gender, your birthday, and then your work history.

For non-US IMGs this could be authorized to work in the US. Yes or no. If it is a V1 visa, you should definitely put a, “No” and say whatever visa that you have, and then you go down under visa's sponsorship. You should definitely indicate a yes. If you're not a visa applicant like this person, you have a green card or you are in the process of getting a green card or this person is an adjustment of status. So they're in limbo, but they have an employment authorization card. Then they fill that out. 

There's no reason to be ashamed of whatever status that you have. I've seen some of these with asylee refugee status, whatever that is. You just have to make sure you pick the right status and if you'll need a visa. If you have any questions, please speak with the immigration attorney as well. That's how you can find out what you'll need. I know usually, for refugee status you don't need to have a visa. You just need to have the employment authorization card so you'll include that there as well. 

Self-identification, whatever your self-identification is, which is basically your race. Present and permanent mailing address, for people that are outside of the US, they usually ask, “Hey, what address do I put in?” You can put in your address in whatever country that you're in as your permanent mailing address, that's perfectly fine.

If you have a US address, yes. Then you can put it as a present mailing address and your permanent mailing address is your home address in your home country. It's perfectly fine to do it that way. Alternate number, you put in your number, your mobile, your fax, and all of that. 

Military service obligation or deferment. Most people are not going to have anything there unless you actually work for the military, then you'll have to indicate a yes. If you have a misdemeanor conviction in the states, they want to know that if you had a felony, they want to know that. They want to know any limitations that you've had in the past, which for most people, most doctors, IMGs, medical students, we pretty much have a clean record.

Medical licensure. And if you don't have a clean record, please answer the question correctly. Again, if you have questions about maybe, “What I was convicted for, was it a misdemeanor? Was it a felony? And how many years after does it fall in your record?” Please talk to a legal counsel or to your local police department. Because this is rare, but I know one person who had a history. Shoplifting when she was in high school, but this was years before she went to undergraduate and years before she went into residency training or into medical school talk less of applying to residency. So in the state that she was in after 10 years, that falls off your record. Because it's a petty crime and so hers wasn't on her record anymore. She doesn't have an active conviction so to speak, but it's always good to speak with your legal representative, your attorney to figure out what's best for you. Because if you lie on the application and they find out that could cause you to be barred from the match.

You want to make sure that you're truthful to the best of your knowledge. If you doubt, and you have a record, just include that on there. Medical licensure, this is if you have ACLS, PALS or BLS, or DEA number. Chances are, if this is your first time in the match, you don't have a DEA number. That's the number that allows you to prescribe controlled substances. BLS, PALS, CLS, some medical students have those. They're not required, you must not have it. Right now, if you're watching this and you don't have a CLS, BLS and PALS, it doesn't mean you're not going to match because every residency program provides a CLS certification, BLS and PALS. I should say most residency programs provide that as part of the orientation process.

I remember as an intern, that orientation week, that was one thing we had to complete. Other programs have embedded protocols that you can use along through the year. They want to know if you've ever been named in a malpractice suit. If you were, please disclose that. 

Medical licensure suspended, revoked, or voluntarily terminated. If you've practiced in another country and you maybe had your license revoked for one thing or the other, you want to disclose that of course. If you're applying for the second time around and you already have board certification in another specialty, then you want to indicate what board certification that you have and that's where this board certification comes under.

The next thing they'll ask you here is your state medical licenses. They'll want to know, “Do you have any state medical licenses?” Because again, some people are applying after they've done PGY-1 in one state and they have a resident license or they have a temporary license in that state. That's where this is applicable. 

If you don't have a state medical license, which is a medical license to practice medicine in any of the United States, then you just indicate, “None” and you move forward. 

Medical education. This person went to this school so they put that school on there, the dates that they attended medical school and their degree, and the date of the degree.

Another thing to remember is they'll ask if you had any interruptions and this is interruption from the date you matriculated medical school until the date that you graduated. It's not interruptions for after-grad medical school, that's a separate portion. They're asking for interruptions in your medical education.

Did you have medical interruption from what you've previously mentioned? The dates you attended, for example, medical school in the states is four years, medical school in the Caribbean is four years. If you have five years like this person, then you have to explain that. If you went to medical school in a country, that's a seven-year so you're in Europe, Asia, South America. All the middle east and you have a five-year curriculum or a seven-year curriculum, you're still going to put those dates on here, but your education wasn't interrupted per se, that's just how your education is. 

Medical education extended. “Yes”, and then she went ahead to explain why. This is a very common question. I get IMGs ask me all the time, “I had gaps in my education”, and they feel like it's going to work against them. By the way, this person did match into residency. This case we're looking at, she matched on first attempt.

Explanation. “I had to take time off due to financial reasons as an international student at the time my basic sciences years. My support system was not able to pay my tuition after I was done with school, my second year of my medical education. For that reason, I was obliged to temporarily withdraw from school for about a year.” Very short and sweet. You want to keep it short and sweet. You want to tell them what happened, you want to be very forthcoming and honest without writing a whole thesis on it. They just need to know that the specifics. I'm now noticing some typos on here, international and basic, it should have been lowercase, but that's fine. She matched so hopefully that wasn't held against her. But you can always explain whatever reason that it is. You just want to make it concise and make it believable. Be honest, that's just the truth. 

If you received any honors or awards, you'll put that on the honors and awards section. “Best student in”, “Ohio's highest GPA”, “Best performance in anatomy”, whatever that is, you include that on there.

Membership in honorary professional societies. This is common in US schools where you have like the Greek societies like Alpha Omega Alpha and such which if you go to a non-US school, you probably don't have these professional societies or memberships or honorary memberships. That's not a problem, don't freak out about it. Just say, “No chapter at my school.” When they ask about the Gold Humanism Honor Society, if you weren't a part of that because your school didn't have it, then that's what it was. But if you are a member of other associations in society, like when we talked about being a part of an association or attending a conference as a student member, you can include that information on here.

If you went to American College of Physicians or American Academy of Family Physicians, or you're a part of the AMSA at your school, or you're part of the US Family Medicine Interest Group. Whatever that is, you can include that on here, because it's a professional society. If you are like me and you live in Kentucky and you're a member of the Kentucky Association of Family Physicians, then you're going to include that on here as well.

Of course, as an attending, I wouldn't be filling this out. But if you were, you could be a member of the Indian Physicians in American Society, you put that on there. You could be a member of the Red Cross. You put that on there, whatever it is or student member of Medecins Sans Frontieres, whatever you put that on there because those are all honoring professional societies. 

Next up you'll have to fill in your education. This person put in they’re undergraduate, they had two different schools for undergrad, they put that on there. Sounds like they started at a community college and then later on went into a university program for their bachelor's of science degree.

They want to know current or prior training. This is if you're currently in residency and you're applying out. This is for the person who is not satisfied with their program and wants to maybe reapply in the match or the person that's transferring out or looking for the PGY-2 position, whatever that is. 

They want your institution, your program director name, supervisor on the days that you were part of because they're definitely going to call them for references. 

Experience can vary from anything. Some people have even non-medical experience, it's work experience. Some people have medical experience, research experience and all those things you can put on here.

This person included their work as a student research assistant. This was probably an undergraduate. But they’re painting the picture of, “I have experience in research from the time I was an undergraduate student.” You don't have to only showcase your experience from when you got into medical school, you can showcase your experience from the time when you were still in undergraduate.

Description, make buffer solutions. She maintained the pH of those buffer solutions. This is just a point and I usually recommend that IMGs, when you fill this out use bullet points, because when you write out a long essay it gets difficult to read and bullet points helps you stay really fixated on what's important.

She described her work experience here. She published abstracts under the University of Utah Undergraduate Research journal. This is what she did, assisted in sample collection, sensory blood sample, organizing data and samples, collecting and analyzing data from dose response curves during the vascular functioning experiments.

Basically, she's just detailing what her job description was at the time. And that was a position or as a student research assistant. The reason for leaving, they always ask about that, “Project completed.” It could be visa expired, it could be left to go home. It could be whatever, moved out of state, moved back to the country. Reason for leaving should just be what it is, the reason for leaving. Keep it honest, factual and short. 

Volunteer experience. She then goes on to indicate she was a volunteer with a family medicine interest group at this one medical center in California and the time she put that on there and they usually ask for the average hour for week and a supervisor's name.

Definitely start collecting those kind of experiences. If you've had experiences from where you volunteered in a medical setting, even if it was before medical school, during medical school, after medical school, please start collecting those, collect the supervisor's names, start gathering in your memory. Try to think about how much time you put into it, because it'll come in handy and including that in your ERAS application. 

Description. “I participated in one-on-one speed mentoring to middle and high schoolers who were interested in becoming physicians.” This volunteer experience, it's not like she hung the moon, right? It's not like she created a cure for cancer, it's something as little as this. Still goes on your CV as, “Hey, I am always actively involved in things that promote medicine in my community.” That's really the point of the volunteer experience. Like “I'm so interested in this specialty that I continue to promote it, even though I haven't even matched into that specialty yet.”

It's important to remember that your volunteer experience should tie in with your specialty interest. I'm going to digress and we'll just talk a little bit about this because there's a lot of talk about the USMLE going into a pass/fail system, Step 1, that is. What they're going to start looking at these types of things, they're going to start looking at past experience and things that build you up to show interest in your specialty. For example, if I had volunteer experience like this, and I was applying to general surgery. A general surgeon would be more interested in the fact that my volunteer experience was in a surgical specialty. The fact that I have like a bunch of family medicine volunteer experiences may not work in my advantage if I'm applying into general surgery, but that doesn't mean you should not include it.

You should definitely include any experience that you have. But my point is, because you're interested in general surgery, please pursue volunteer experience in that specialty. Because you're interested in cardiology, please pursue volunteer experience in internal medicine or in cardiology or any of the internal medicine sub-disciplines. 

You really want to make sure that your application paints a full picture of who you are. So from undergrad, all the way down into volunteer into some of the other things we're going to see and what we looked at just previously up here, work experience. You want to make sure that you're telling a story of who you are. That is the point of this ERAS application. 

I know another student that I coached. It's not a student as a doctor. He had already graduated medical school before moving to the states, worked under a nurse practitioner for several years in California. Really wanted to have the opportunity to match, applied three times and did not match. Initially was interested in internal medicine, but all of his volunteer experiences, research experiences were in psych. By the time he finally got a pre match offer about a year ago and when he did get that pre match offer, he got it in a psych program. I think it's because when you look at his ERAS application, he had psych volunteer experience, psych observership, psych rotation. Everything was psych, psych, psych, psych, psych. He had okay scores. It wasn't like the best, but wasn't the worst either, what you call average scores. But even at that with an application that paints a picture of psych, he got a pre match offer opportunity after trying several times in internal family medicine, but he got it in a psych rotation.

Of course, this person networked like crazy, because I know that he did because I talked to him often. He was showing up and calling attendings. He would call programs, ask for opportunities, show up, work for a month, volunteer, try to get whatever he could get out of that experience. I know that he was putting himself out there, networking himself, just like a business person would. And that happened for him, but his application was full of psych material. So it's no surprise to me that he finally got a pre-match offer into a psych program. 

Volunteer experience, you can volunteer even with your student organization. This person mentioned that she advised and mentored five incoming students on campus life, student body, medical school expectations. The reason for leaving was that the project was done. I think sometimes we think it has to be some magical experience for it to matter. Every little thing counts. Same thing with research and we'll talk about that when we get to the research and publication section. She put in another voluntary experience here, and this was in Dominica as a medical student volunteer and really just taking patient H&P’s, that's it. Everything that you do can go a long way to at least attract programs to call you in for interview.

Then the whole interview process is a separate ballgame. Volunteer experience again, we have here public health at Ross University, participating in various clinics. Again, that could go on and on. She even wanted to include her choir volunteer position. You can omit that if you want, you can put it in if you want. It doesn't hurt anything, but really if I was a program director and I was a part of the choir that could make me feel really happy to talk to you because that means you're also part of a choir. You just never know what people are into these days. 

Volunteer experience continues. This person had tons of volunteer experience and I think that she did those things in order to improve her chances of matching so to speak. Instead of being, “I don’t have a whole lot to show for.” All or most of her experiences were in things that were put on a position where when it came time to apply for family medicine residency, she was in a better place.

So that continues, let's go into something else. Let's go into research. Research experience, I think sometimes we get bogged down thinking that we have to publish a randomized control trial to be eligible to a state that we have research experience. That is great, if you have a publication, you can definitely cite that.

StatPearls, S-T-A-T-P-E-A-R-L-S, is a great way to get publications, especially for IMGs. But if you don't have a publication, you can dig back into your undergraduate. Did you have research experience as an undergrad? Some of you have done masters of public health degrees, and you've done community-based research, or you have done public health research, or you have facilitated someone else's research, all of that matters.

This person listed their position as a student research assistant. You could be a research facilitator, you could be a volunteer. The most important thing is that if they call that facility, that facility can vouch at you carried out whatever you have written in your application. She basically detailed, she presented at a university symposium and this was from undergrad. She did all these different poster presentations and published two abstracts, which again were very detailed, basic science arterial dysfunction in DB mice. Again, could make a difference, but really, I think the most important thing to remember is with residency application, the program just want to know that you have some understanding of what it takes to do research, that's it. 

They want to know that you have some experience of what it takes to do research. That you can interpret a research article. It's the same thing, like on the USMLE exams, when they ask you questions about interpreting a research paper usually under biostats. It's really about just understanding that you have a general idea because if we want to do research as a program, we want to feel comfortable that our students or our interns and residents have a general idea. Because you're going to become an expert in residency.

None of your life right now is going to be complete until at least in medicine, until you have received additional training. You'll learn a lot more and they don't expect you to be an expert in research. That's why every little thing counts. 

Publications, great area to highlight any publications that you've done, any poster presentations. If you went to a medical conference and you did a poster presentation, you put that on there. If you presented at your journal club day, you put that there under oral presentation. If you presented you were the poster and it only was shown at your local conference. You still put that on there and you put the citation so that they can refer to it if they need to.

Oral presentations, same thing. If you did oral presentations in medical school, or even community presentations to patients, large groups, or whatever, you put that on here. This is something as simple as in 2017, I did a presentation on psychogenic polydipsia or a presentation presented at Didactics and Lectures in Bakersville, California.

During your rotations, when your attending says, “Tomorrow, I want to talk about sepsis.” Or whatever that is, you can say, “Hey, I'll do a presentation on it.” And then the reason you're opting to do that presentation is so that when you come to your ERAS application, you can put that on there as an oral presentation. When your attending says, “Hey we've been having a ton of cases of readmissions.” You can say, “Hey, I'm going to do a retrospective review of 30-day readmission. I'd like to present that at the next conference that we have or something.” 

Those are opportunities that you can be looking for, to facilitate yourself. Don't only wait for someone like an attending to say, “Hey, I have a research project. Do you want to be a part of it?” You should also be innovative so that when you come down to filling out this ERAS app, you can put in your posters, you can put in your oral presentations as well. 

Then languages, sometimes they ask about, they always do not sometimes. 

Hobbies and interests, please don't leave that blank. I see a lot of IMGs will leave this blank. It's really important that you don't leave the hobbies and interests blank because this could be the one place where somebody finds some type of connection with you. Like this person says, “I'm still learning every day about cooking and accepting constructive criticism. I feel like food is the best way to unite and have people on the same table.” That's her interest. She likes to cook or whatever. Singing, it's fine. It's okay to be who you are. 

They want to know that you're a person. The truth is physicians also have hobbies and interests. If I was reading this and I love cooking for the same reasons, and I love singing for the same reasons, guess what? It's just happened, you built some likability with me, right? So it's important to keep that on there. 

Hometowns, if you have more than one, you can include that. This person included Seattle, where they live, and also Cameroon, where they were born. 

Other awards and accomplishments, anything from your background, from undergraduate, from medical school, from your social commitments, and your organizations that you're part of in your community. You can definitely, definitely, definitely include all of that on here.

Then of course, you're going to swear that all this information is accurate to the best of your knowledge. And then that's it. I hope that with this, you have been able to gather some perspective on how to fill out your ERAS application and you can make better choices as to what to include and what not to omit.

I think sometimes the biggest thing is we forget the stuff that we've done, or we undermine the clinical activities that we've done. We think it's not important for residency when indeed, it could very well be very important. Thank you guys for watching.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I see Valeria in the room Tulsi, Sarah, Raquel, Kosi, Claudia, Dr. Shanti. I see everyone. I was in a practice session and I did not turn on the start button, so that's what happened. I'm so sorry. I was like, "I can't see everyone." And it just happens that I was still in a practice session, so I couldn't see anyone.

So welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Dr. Chelsea, Ciri, Claudia, Clementine, Dr. Diaz, Dr. Editha Ebere, Ezi, Janilee, Javid, Kritikha, Rohit, Manprit, Maria, Omolare, Precious, Raquel, Ravneet, Sarah, Sol, Tashi, Toyosi, Tulsi, Valeria, welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So we're going to get right into tonight. We have so many things to cover but how's everybody doing? How are you guys doing? How has your week been? I know you can't talk back at me on the webinar whenever we do the webinar, but we'll have a meeting tonight also because I want us to be able to interact as well.

Let me get my presentation. That way I'll go over what we're going to do tonight and how that will flow and let's open with preview. Let's see here. Let me go to the chat, see what everybody's saying. You're doing great. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Happy to see you guys. Awesome. I can read your comments now. I'm going to share my screen to start out.

We are in our sixth week of the IMG Roadmap course, and it feels like time has literally just escaped us. This says May 12th, but today is May 16th. That's a typo on my part. And I don't know how that remained there, but it is Sunday, May 16th and it's our very last session. Our very last group session of the six-week IMG Roadmap course. And I feel sad even saying that because I've enjoyed this time with you and I just started to get kind of used to getting to see you every night and meet you every Sunday night and chat to where it's ingrained in my schedule now. Then I have to depart from that next week. I feel, “Oh my God, I'm not ready to separate”, a little bit of separation anxiety. 

We're going to go over some reminders tonight. We'll talk a little bit about the course overview and then tonight, we're going to have both a webinar and a Q&A. What I mean by that is we'll talk about the ERAS form in a webinar format.

The reason I'm doing this is because I'm going to obviously save that video and have it uploaded to the platform because come August when you start filling out your ERAS form, I want you to have that video as a resource for you. 

Even though yes, you have the original ERAS form that's part of the course, I'm going to go into so much more detail tonight, and I want you to save this information. You don't have to take notes because the reason I'm doing a webinar so that it would record as a teaching webinar. When you go back to watch it, you could just follow the screen prompts and fill out your own form after you've gotten your ERAS token and you're ready to sign and fill this form.

Then the last part, what we'll do is when I finish the webinar, we're going to end this Zoom meeting that you joined. And before we get there, Kim is going to send the Zoom meeting information in the chat. So when I finish the lecture portion, which is where I'm talking, and we're recording it so that you have it for future reference.

When we complete that part, I'll end the webinar, and then you'll come back into the meeting format. Like the meeting format where you can turn your camera, my camera is on and we can communicate. Yes, you'll come back into the meeting format by clicking on the link that Kim will put in the chat.

Then during that session, we could do a Q& A and talk about things that you've been thinking about - how to fill out your form or any other questions that you have. Then we'll also save that as a second video, just for those who miss it and who want to rewatch the Q&A, but I want you to-- Is that clear? Can you guys tell me if that makes total sense or not? Let me make Kim the co-host. 

I want you to pay attention because I think the last time I did this switch, I had somebody in the Facebook group asking where's the link to come back into the meeting. So please pay attention. Copy that Zoom link or meeting ID that Kim has put in the chat. Just copy that and save somewhere. Kim, you can post that on the Facebook group as well. You can also- if you want to just shoot out an email really quickly so that they know not to join it until after we're finished the webinar.

I have in the chat, I see everyone saying yes, sounds great. We're all very clear okay. Makes sense. Okay, good. Let's stick back in with what we're doing right now. So first course of review, your course dates were April 5th, 2021 to May 16th, 2021. And that is tonight and it's been six weeks.

And during the six weeks, we've covered several topics. We've covered primarily your individual concerns. We've talked about your specific scenario, whether it was doing office hours, mostly doing office hours, and then during the Q&A sessions in the evenings, you've heard from other IMG roadmappers and even non-roadmappers who have been where you're at.

You've seen the evidence, you've seen imperfect applicants get what they want. You have learned about the mindset that it takes to succeed in this process. You've learned about how to change your mindset and to reframe the networks in your brain and really take neuroplasticity to a whole different level and think differently about your circumstances.

You've learned about US clinical experience, how to get you a US clinical experience, whether it's on your own personal search. I gave you a database of programs that have given observerships to students in the past. There's a list there that- this was prior to COVID, but you could still figure out who's still open and who isn't.

You got tons of templates on emails and how to draft those and who to send them to. And so many of you have seen results. So many of you have seen evidence of your networking and just stepping out of your own comfort zone and just attempting or trying these different things. You've seen how that has come to work for you.

And some of you are still in the process. You're still debating between whether you really want to stick with the fixed mindset or you really want to adopt a growth mindset. And then a lot of times we seemingly always have both mindsets in play. You want to do something, you want to put yourself out there, but then that other part of you tells you how much you could get rejected and how impossible it is and this, that, and every other thing. And then you go back and forth like that. And that is not unusual that doesn't make you a weak person. Doesn't make you a bad person, but that is just a struggle that everybody goes through. But at some point, you have to begin to no longer rely on your feelings to no longer rely on your emotions but to just go ahead and take action.

And if you remember the very first webinar that I did earlier in the spring, my challenge to you was if persistence to commit and then to take action. And all of you on here took action. You joined me and here we are at the end of six weeks, you also learned about the letters that you should submit.

You learned about all your letter writers should submit, you learned about the personal statement, you learned about USMLE and other parts of the mindset that it takes really to do well on the exam because I've noticed a lot of students who do not perform well like myself on step one. I did not perform well on step one and a lot of students who have the same problem, it's not because we're not intelligent enough. It's not because we don't have the IQ to pass the test. It's not because we're not good enough. 

Unfortunately, the system has made it to where up until now a step one score has been the holy grail of who gets what. And thankfully that may move to pass-fail coming up soon, but it has left a huge scar for a lot of students because that one score has tend to define everything that we are, which is so untrue. But one of the things that I learned about myself when I was doing USMLE step one and transitioning into USMLE step two was my mindset was one of the biggest reasons why I didn't do well on step one, because I didn't even know how to start looking for resources.

I got overwhelmed. I wanted to do what everybody was doing. I realized everybody was using a different format, a different technique. Then I ended up just hopping from technique to technique and there was no level of mastery of my content. And so that is the key mistake. And that was from mindset because my mind thought, “If I hear this person did this, I should do it. If I hear this person did this, I should do this. If this person took the past program, I must do it. This person took it. I must.” And then you end up doing too many things. And you are not learning any of the key concepts because your hand is dipped in too many different things, instead of just focusing on what resources that you have and doing as many questions, multiple choice questions, really engaging that active learning in the brain and really engaging that critical thinking in the brain.

That is what I believe could have played a role, a separate or a different role, for me when I was studying for the exam. Again, it boils onto what? Mindset. Then there is the fear factor. There's a factor of fear, anxiety, what if, what if, what if? And then there is the negative press, right? The blogs, the people that tell us this is not possible and yada, yada, yada. 

So I hope that these last six weeks, I've helped you to unravel some of these things and to reverse some of these negative psychology that has become a normal part of our thinking, and maybe begin to create a story that brings us to success, because until we believe it internally, that we are capable of achieving these things that we're seeking for. We do not subconsciously position ourselves to begin to take the steps that create the actions that will bring us to what we want. And so my challenge for you at the end of this course is to take everything that I've said and run with it. These lessons are going to be available to you. You should not stop here because it does not end here.

This is just the beginning of the work that you need to do. You have all these tools and resources in your arsenal now. You have a lot more inside information than you did prior to starting the course. And now it's your turn. I'm passing the baton back to you to take action. 

So let's go over what happens to you next, right? Because you'd be asking what happens next, all these things that we've been a part of in the course, this is just vanished into thin air? No. So number one, the course platform will stay available to you. So whenever you log into– you have your information for imgroadmap.com, that login is going to be yours forever and ever.

Hopefully, obviously, the plan is that you will not need it after your first attempt at the match, but in the past, as you've seen, there've been people that have needed it more than once. So you'll be able to come back at any time in the future and review any sessions that you missed and replay sessions as you please. So your access to the course remains the same. As on this call, there are people that are on this call right now that were here last year and they didn't have to re-register. They didn't have to start over. They just had access to it and they just continue to have access to it.

And so you will have access to all– everything that's on the platform right now that you signed up for. The replays, the videos, the actual course videos themselves, all of that remains active for you. It does not fall off. It doesn't disappear. You don't get ejected from the course. None of that. Your access to the course is lifelong.

I'll say it again. As long as you have your login and your password, you can access the course after today. It would be all replays. It'll be all the actual course itself and the replays and all the information that is there for your consumption. 

The Facebook group will hibernate. What I mean by that is I use the Facebook group actively during the period of the course. There's so many links that we've posted on there. I'm not going to take those down, I'll leave those on there, but you will not see a whole lot of new posts or new action going on the group, everything that's on there will stay and it will stay that way until the next cycle of the course comes live. And then the Facebook group becomes active again. 

So just a note on that, the numerous emails that you get from me will definitely reduce. So your spam box, your email box, you won't be like, “oh my gosh, it's emailing me all the time”. So that will be out the door. You wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. You'll still receive my emails. If you stay on my list and I usually send out the once weekly emails regarding the podcast. And whenever I hear new resources or sometimes if I have something going on in my bookstore I may send out an email to you, but obviously your email intensity will reduce because the emails related to the course will end. 

Now over the next week, you'll get some emails from me. I have a survey that will go out and I'll also share that survey link at the end of the meeting tonight. For those of you who want to go ahead and do the survey, it's usually a way for me to build feedback, to learn from my mistakes, and to make it better for the next cycle. 

And then podcast episodes will continue. They've always continued and that's not going to stop. So some of you learned about me through my podcast. Some of you have been listening to it prior to becoming a member of the course, and those will always be there. It's one of the– I think it’s the best part of this whole entire process, is having that podcast to share perspectives of so many different physicians so that you all can identify with one person that maybe has a similar path to you, a similar walk of life, similar specialty interest, and so on. 

The resources that are on the course, the downloadables, they're all yours. But remember, those are copyright protected also. So what that means is you cannot reproduce it. You can't share with other people because it's copyright protected, but it's all there for your personal use. Your individual use. 

We'll get into just some last-minute things. So our Zoom etiquette, as we all know, it is what it is. I wouldn't spend so much time into that because everybody can recite this at this point.

Tonight's session, like I said, the first part was the announcement which we just completed. And then the second part is the teaching. And then the third part is where we will end this webinar altogether and we'll go into a zoom meeting. 

I'm going to start by going straight into the presentation for tonight. But before I do, I put in some links on here that I want you to pay special attention to because these links are created by the AAMC. And some of you may have, or may not have reviewed these already. So the first one is the ERAS Applicant Checklist, and it is basically a checklist that says, “hey, this is what you should be looking out for.”

So I'm sure you all can see my screen. Can you see my screen here? Okay, good. So this checklist is made by AAMC and the link will be in the email that comes out to you. If you haven't already seen this checklist, but it just basically runs through all the things that you need to do and it'll keep you on point with what you need to submit. 

A lot of people have questions about what to submit and all that. This is a great document that I think you should save on your laptop or your desktop or something. Just keep checking boxes as soon as you complete something so that you have a reference. Remember, ECFMG is your dean's office here. You want to make sure that you keep their number or the email to ask them questions, especially when you start filling out stuff and submitting material.

Then they have these assigning documents that you can make notation of what you've done and so on and so forth. But I think that's a really great resource by the AAMC. You’ll also get that link. The next thing is the actual ERAS form which I want us to go into right now. 

Welcome to this ERAS application worksheet. I'm going to close all these other browsers so that we don't have any interruption. So welcome to your ERAS application worksheet. This form I think is a good sample form that you can use to practice on your own when it comes to how to prepare your ERAS application.

We'll go through each line item and I want to talk about the specific portion of each line item and what I think you should consider when filling it out. The very beginning asks for your demographic information, that's pretty obvious. There's really nothing to say about that. You'll put in what your real name is and your information. 

Address. Usually, this is the area where students, especially IMGs that are outside of the United States, they tend to have questions. One of them is what I've heard frequently is, “If I put a foreign address, is that bad? Or will they not consider me because I have a foreign address?” or something like that. Your current mailing address is best if it is a US-based address because it just makes it easier for communication with you in case there are any hard mails or anything, snail mail that needs to be mailed out to you.

I usually recommend that even if you're an IMG and you're outside of the US, it's good to obtain a current mailing address. That is a US address, if possible. Obviously, if you're in Canada, you can always put your Canadian address. If you're in any other country, you can put the other country's address. That's perfectly fine. But I just noticed that it's a lot easier to have a mailing address that is local. That is my perspective. I'm not saying that this is a hard stop rule, but have at least one US address.

And then the permanent address. There you can put your home address and that's really where your permanent address is. So for example, my permanent address would be a Cameroonian address. My current mailing address was like the apartment that I was staying in Chicago when I was a third and fourth-year medical student.

Other people have done the same where they say, “I have a family member that I'll be living with when I do interviews. So I'm going to put that as my mailing address and put my permanent address as my home address in Saudi or wherever I live.” The only advantage of doing it that way is that you have an address that is local. Your mails are not going to get missed if they need to send you out anything in the mail. 

Now the second part is the work authorization, and this is pretty straightforward. You're going to pick whatever you meet criteria for. Usually, it's obvious. You know what your status is. Now, the only times that I've seen students have a little bit of confusion around this is when they're in between statuses. They're changing from one status to another and usually, there's actually an adjustment status applicant option that can go for that, or it could be “other”. And if you click “other”, I'm pretty sure that it'll put up a box for you to explain. So no matter what status that you have, if you're non-us IMG, you can get that in there somehow. If you have a work authorization card, you could also just pick that. 

Then they ask if you reside here or in Canada, and then they ask for your current state or permanence of residence. Again, answer in full honesty. You don't have to make things up to be more appealing to a program. For example, that's just not the right mentality to have. 

So, match information. NRMP match is separate from ERAS and this is something that I did not realize that some IMGs did not understand that there was a difference between both. 

NRMP match requires its own registration process and it's a completely separate thing from ERAS. You'll be applying into ERAS and then you're also going to get an NRMP login, and you're going to register for the NRMP separately. The NRMP is the people that govern and control the actual match process, like where you put your match list in on your website, and they put programs together. They take programs, match lists, and try to allow for a match to occur between you, the applicant, and a program.

That's a separate website from MyERAS. So when you register for NRMP, you will get your NMRP ID, and you're going to put it on there. If you are applying as a couple. Then yes, you'll put in your couple's information. If not, you can leave it as such. I get this question often, “Is it advantageous to apply as a couple or as a single?”, especially if you actually do have a partner that's also in this process, do what you want to do.

If you and your spouse want to be in the same location, go for the couples match. If you don't want to be in the same location, then don't do it. But don't do it because you think that would give you a better chance at matching individually or something like that. 

The next one is urology match, AUA member number. Obviously, if you're applying to urology, you would've already been a member of the American Urology Association, which is AUA and you would have your member number. You'd be able to use that on here. If you don't have one then you're not really going for urology, so nothing to worry about.

Additional information, they ask for ECFMG ID. The NBOME obviously is not applicable to you. AOA is not applicable to you. American Osteopathic Administration, you're not a member, you're not a DO. So you skip that. 

ACLS, PALS, and BLS. This is another area where students ask me, “Should I go do ACLS, PALS, and BLS, just so I have something to put on here?”

It's not required for residency. All training programs are going to give you the opportunity to complete ACLS, PALS, and BLS. They're just asking here if you do have it, then you put it on there. If you don't have it, you don't have to strive to go get it. Focus on the important things, the personal statement, the letters, the number of programs you're applying into your US local experience. Those are things that matter, not these things. If something is not on that checklist that AAMC has given you for application, then it is not required. But yes, there are some things that are good to have, but if you don't have it, you don't have to go try to get it right now just to put it on the form.

That's not the right reason. But if you do have those certifications, then please by all means you check yes and you put what date it expires. Even if you feel like it's going to expire before you start residency. Put it on there because you have it, it just will expire in a couple of months or in a couple of weeks.

The next thing is a Sigma Sigma Phi status, Alpha Omega Alpha status, Gold Humanism Society. So if you are a member of any of these societies, you would know what they are. Alpha Omega Alpha, there is an honorary medical society, same thing with the Gold Humanism. If you're a member, you'll check that and you'll put that on there.

If you're not a member, you don't need to go try to seek about becoming a member because don't even waste your time. Just skip it and go to another portion. I think a lot of people get caught up as to, “Do I have this membership?” If you had the membership, you would know. If you don't have the membership, it's not a make-or-break situation.

Just go to the next part of your application. Self-identification. Obviously, you're going to pick what works to best describe your ethnicity. And then ERAS, this is the language fluency. Another thing I say about language is don't put a language that you can't speak, because if you lie– actually I should preface by saying, please do not lie on your ERAS form.

Do not misrepresent information, do not make it look bigger and better than what it really was. Do not try to inflate yourself because you don't know what these programs are going to ask you about in interview. And if you lie about something or you put on here that you can speak American sign language or Armenian and you get on the interview trail and the faculty member is Armenian and wants to have a conversation with you and says something and you don't understand.

If you speak basic fair, make it basic or fair. Don't say you're in advance or functionally native speaker when you're not fluent in it, because you just never know how it's going to come back and bite you on the butt. So you can pick whatever languages that you speak, but just be honest. If you're not an advanced speaker, you don't have to say that you're an advanced speaker, because they want you to notify whether make note of whether you're fair or basic.

A lot of us can say a few words in Spanish so does that make me an advanced Spanish speaker? No. It may make me a basic Spanish speaker and so I could check Spanish and say, I speak the language imperfectly and it's a limited degree in limited situations. And then when it comes up in the interview, if I'm not fluent, then I would say, I'm only a basic Spanish speaker, not in advance or good, but don't pick something because you can say like, “Hola como estas?” That's not speaking Spanish, it's just knowing a phrase.

Military information. If you have served in the military, so those who are US IMGs, there's an area to thrive. Obviously, if you have that in your background, please put that on there. Do you have any service obligations? If you have any obligations that you haven't yet fulfilled or have already fulfilled, you can put that on there.

Hobbies and interests. This is an area where I see IMGs just like skip over like it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. It is a big deal because a majority of interviews, especially for primary care programs, they usually want to start with just getting to know you. And this goes back to that whole thing I'm talking about likability, how to win friends and influence people that you meet.

A lot of times people will look for a common ground, an icebreaker. And an easy icebreaker is your hobbies and interest. If you have a hobby, you have an interest that is quirky or different. Please put that on there. Don't think that this is not all programs that want to know that I know how to knit or programs will want to know that I'm a songwriter or programs will want to know that I play the piano.

Please put that on there because that may be something that attracts somebody else to you. They may look at them and say, “Oh, I play the piano too. What kind of piano do you play?” Or “You play the ukulele. What have you done with it?” And that becomes a conversational topic. I've had people go on interviews where all they do is talk about things that are not related to medicine just because they had so much in common with the person interviewing them.

They had an interest in common that they put that on there. Obviously, if your interest is something violent or criminal, don't put that. But there are very few things that you'll put on here that would hurt you. Like I said, it has to be completely criminal evil, really.

But otherwise, most hobbies and interests could just really be an icebreaker. And what I usually tell people to do is for example, if I was going to put a hobby and I say playing the piano or something like that. If I did that, I could always also say, “Won the piano championship.” I don't know wherever I live right in 1998. “Won the piano championship in Plano, Texas, 1998.” If there was something to go with that, that is remarkable. I would just put that on in a one-line like that. If I don't have that, I don't have to put that.

I could just say playing the piano. And that applies for whatever is, you can always just give a very short description of something remarkable that you've done with your hobby. So, “Plays soccer is my hobby and I won the soccer tournament”, you just put out like, “I won the medal for this and that”, or it could be track and field long-distance running or whatever.

And then I could put “Medalist for 2020 medalist”, and then I put the town. Let's say Texas, or whatever. You can do stuff like that or you could just leave it as long-distance running or short-distance running. So those are things that you can use to really just become an icebreaker in your application.

Hometown. If you have more than one hometown, you can put that on there. So mine could look something like Douala, Cameroon, or it could look like and it could also look like Bowie, Maryland. It could just be whatever hometown it is for you. It could be for somebody else, it could be Tehran, it could be whatever so you just put your hometown on there.

Higher education. This is usually your undergraduate and graduate schools. Not not necessarily like high school and all of that stuff. If you don't have an undergraduate, because most non-US medical schools don't have an undergraduate, like they just have a six-year curriculum, then you don't have to put anything in for undergraduate.

You just do “none” and then you go ahead and under medical education, you just put your medical school. The key will be in your year that you started, so from month to year. And for month to year is really that's where your dates of attendance it'll show seven years or however many years it took you.

On the actual ERAS form, they usually ask if there's any gaps in your education after you fill in the medical school part. It'll put a small, there's a box there that says, “Was there any gaps or interruptions, communication? Explain why.” And this is a common question that IMGs seem to panic about is like, “Oh my God, I have gaps. I have gaps. I have gaps.”

It just has to be a very short two to three sentences explaining specifically what it is. What we've done in the past as you listen to this, and as you watch this is just think about the true reason why you had a gap and rephrase that in three short sentences that focus on exactly what happened, how long that took, and when it ended and how you move forward from it. 

So for example, I had gaps and my gaps were because of two things. My gaps were because I was on a B-1 visa and I had to extend my visa every six months. During that process, I was in the United States and doing my visa extensions, and I had to wait for the USCIS to give permission to carry on with my activities.

The second reason I had a gap was I transferred medical schools. And I transferred medical schools because I wanted to be at a school that will offer me better clinical rotations. Then the third reason that I had a gap was because I was studying for USMLE Step 1 during those first two gaps during the process of transferring medical schools and during the process of extending my B-1, B-2 visa. That's a mouthful, right? But what I'm saying is in my head, I'm speaking to myself and I'm saying, “Those are the three reasons why I had a gap. Now, how do I put that in my ERAS form to just make it brief and succinct?” It would be when they ask me a reason for a gap, I'll click on there. On this sample form, it doesn't ask that, but I'm saying this because on the real form, you're going to see that on there. At least unless they change it for 2021, but ideally it's usually on there. I would explain my own– based on what I've told you, I would explain mine by just writing out, “I had a gap for a total of six months during which I was extending my B-1, B-2 visa in order to stay within legal status to continue medical education. Period. I also was working on studying for my USMLE Step 1 preparation by doing a Kaplan course.” This was after I completed the Kaplan, I was studying for USMLE Step 1 and I forgot my third reason, but then I just put that on there. Just descriptive and short. “And once this gap was completed, I moved in to continue my clinical rotations.” End of story. 

You don't have to tell them because obviously also during that time, I also had some other personal issues in my life that maybe added a one-week here or two-week there. I didn't have to disclose that, but I just put a summary of all the key big ticket items. Which was my visa status that I can move forward without getting legal status, my studying for the exam, I could move forward without doing Step 1 and I could sit for Step 1 while not being legal in the state. So there's just one result and another. Then I think I also wrote a line about, “I had financial difficulty and I just had to basically wait until the funds became available.”

And to me, that was my truth. That was what it was so I just put that on there and I think it was three to four sentences. I don't remember exactly, but you can explain your gaps by just speaking the truth and focusing on the highlight items. So the big items, but not necessarily every nitty-gritty detail like, “I left from here and I went here and then I went here and jumped up the mountain and came back down.” No, just the key items. 

First, you start by saying it out loud. “What are the reasons why I had a gap? There was this. How do I summarize that in very simple terms?” Make it fast, make it quick by only hitting the key items.

Medical education. You're going to put that on there. Membership in honorary and professional societies. You know what societies you're a member of and like I've mentioned in the past. If you're a member of the American College of Physicians, you're not just going to write ACP. You're going to write it out, say “AmericaCollege of Surgeons.” And then you're going to put a parenthesis, “ACS.” You're just not going to say, “American College of Physicians”, especially as American College of Services. ACS was pretty common, but say you were a member of the Nigerian Medical Association. Let's just say that was a real organization. So you're a member of this, but if you just come on here and say, “NMA”, you could confuse that person with the SNMA. 

It's always good that you spell out exactly like what professional societies you're referring to. Write it all out and then put the abbreviations in parentheses so that there's no confusion.

Medical school awards. You're also going to list out any awards. This is another area people will get like best anatomy student or best performance in something. Put it on there. If your school gives you an award for something, put it on there. It doesn't matter if you think it's a big enough award or if it's a good enough award, that's not what they asked you.

They didn't ask you if you were worthy of it because a lot of us we're dealing with imposter syndrome. And so we're just not identifying our own achievements. So as I'm going through this form, be thinking about yourself also and thinking about your achievements that you can go back in and highlight.

Same thing with other awards and accomplishments. Say it wasn't a medical school, but it was an undergraduate award that you got, put it on there. Is it an accomplishment? Put it on there. Because that just brings variety to who you are and tells people other things that you're really good at.

Training. This is if you've obtained any prior residency training. For those that are applying for PGY-2 positions, this is where they'll put in their PGY-1 year. This prior training is specific to only if you've had prior residency training in the US or prior fellowship training in the US.

So prior training and everywhere else is not being asked of you at this time. What they're asking you for is if you've trained here, if you haven't trained here, then it's a none. If you have, then you put it in. Your prior training in your country that you did will go under your work experience. Just trying to clarify that for anybody that has doubts. 

The next thing that you come into is experience. Under experience, they ask for work experience, for volunteer experience, and so on. Work experience is a key area that I know a lot of IMGs struggle with is, “What do I put and how do I put it?” So I say you put every work experience that you have, especially if it's relevant to your activity, to your specialty.

What I mean by that is if you were a bartender for two months in the summer, or when you are in college, you can leave that out because that's not relevant to where you're going. It was a summer gig. You just did it for money, or you're a babysitter. You don't need to put that in there. 

If you were a tutor. I will put that in there because that’s actually something that is valuable. “I'm a USMLE Step 1 tutor.” That's actually a better work experience provided that obviously, you'll have to put the organization. So you're a tutor with Kaplan, the position that you were, and who your supervisor is because this is basically putting down more references than your letter of recommendation. You need to make sure that you have substantial evidence to support whatever work experience you're saying that you have. 

Description becomes a key point for IMGs. There's two school of thoughts. One is, “Should I put in bullet points? Should I put in paragraphs?” I don't think that it matters, whether you use bullet points, a paragraph. I think what matters the most is that you're communicating effectively. What do I mean by that? Work experience? You have to describe it. Focus with action verbs and results. The more descriptive you can get the better it would be.

For example, I didn't have a lot of work experience, but I'm just going to think about some other people's work experience that I can think of. So last year, I coached the CRNA who was going into residency application. One of his work experiences was we put all this stuff and we put description, of course, it was a certified registered nurse anesthetist for five years.

You put the specific timeframe, like that key period performed. If you can remember your number of procedures, you can put that in, you can be super specific or you could just say performed pre-anesthesia, post-anesthesia care, including intubations, spinals, epidurals and that's it.

You just describe that. Then reason for leaving, “Completed assignment, went to medical school.” You can describe what you've done using action terms. When I'm reading the application, I want to be able to understand what you specifically did. I want to be able to measure it somehow.

I want to be able to relate to what you're saying. And I want to know what lessons that you learned from it. In that description, it makes sense to me because it says this person was a certified registered nurse, assistant nurse anesthetist. They were in a ward for a period of about five years, they performed over a hundred procedures, including but not limited to intubations and spinals, and epidurals. And they left because they had to go to medical school. 

You want to give the reader action, like just key points. You don't need to go into all the details of, “One day, I also ran a code, and then another day I delivered an infant because the doctor wasn't there.” No, no, no. Keep the highlights of the job.

You were a nurse before. Same thing, description. “Worked as a registered nurse in an inpatient setting or in an ICU setting for three years. Provided bedside care including–” but everybody knows what a nurse is. So you really don't have to go into so much detail, but you can talk about the generality.

Maybe you became the charge nurse, then you can say, “Carried the role of the charge nurse for two of those five years.” Whether you moved to the emergency room, became an emergency department director. You can put those highlights in there, but you don't have to talk about you did all the Foleys, all the catheters, because that's understandably part of your work, but you can talk about specifically the leadership roles that you gained, the carry advancement that it brought to you, any key items, and takeaways from doing that job. And the reason for leaving, “Moved to the next opportunity or moved to the next job.” Whatever that is, you put out the factual reason for leaving. They're not asking you to describe everything that happened. “My boss fired me then there was this meeting.” No, reason for leaving. “Moved to next assignment or was dismissed” if that was the case or, “Move to medical school” or some of you, its going to be, “Moved to the United States to join family.” So you may be in a position where you're already working in your country right now and you're in this process of transitioning to the states because your family here, your husband, your wife, your student, your spouse, whatever, and you were saying, “Reason for leaving, to join my family in the United States or to join my family in Detroit, Michigan.” That's a reason for leaving. There's nothing wrong with that. What I'm trying to say is don't downplay something that is true to you because you feel like it is not good enough because that's not what they're asking for, they're just trying to know more about you. 

Then always make sure you have the dates because they'll definitely ask you when you started and when you ended. And that's why I think you won't lose anything, but I think jobs that are maybe like menial, or maybe only you did for a week or two that doesn’t– you have to put the month in the year. It was under a month so it's really hard to speak to learning from a job like that, but anything over a month or so that was substantial then yes, obviously, you put that on there. 

Caribbean medical students usually have this sort of dilemma and the question is whether to put rotations as work experience or not.

The truth of the matter is the way that this question is being asked, if you put your work experience type here, you'll definitely put a clinical rotation as a type, right? So you could say work experience, but you'll have to pick and say “This was a clinical rotation in OBGYN. This was a six-week clinical rotation in OBGYN.” Because your supervisor's name is already here, your address, everything, the hours. “Learned.” You just list out a few things that are part of the core curricula. An easy way to know about what the core curricular is, usually, at the beginning of the rotation, your attending will send you out or the school will notify you about your next rotation and whatnot, or you can visit the member website.

So for OBGYN, you can go on the member website and they'll tell you what they expect students to know. You can use that terminology to rephrase things. And then the reason for leaving could be, “Moved to next rotation.” Some IMGs do this, especially Caribbean students. They'll do this so that they can represent that they did their clinicals in the states.

I think nowadays, programs know that Caribbean students do their rotations in the states. So the question, “Isn't that redundant?” Yes, it is. And it's also redundant if the MSPE already has those rotations detailed. Some dean’s letters, the MSPE will have those letters, those information detailed on there.

So sometimes what you may notice is you don't need to put it on here as well if it's already on your MSPE. There's no right or wrong way, but if your school doesn't have an MSPE or it's not being represented anywhere else that you've done your clinicals in the states, then you can use this as an opportunity to express that.

If you're from one of the bigger schools that do provide an MSPE and they do cover that, then you don't need to be redundant with it and only focus on actual work experience. 

The next category is volunteer experience. Again, the same applies. When you volunteer somewhere, there's no such thing as a good enough volunteer experience and a bad volunteer experience.

The most important thing is that you did charitable work and here you are showcasing your charitable work. And you're saying, “This is the work that I've done. And I added to or improved humanity by doing this.” So same thing, you're going to pick the organization that you worked with. I think the volunteer experiences that make a big difference are if there are volunteer experiences within your specialty. So you want to be a pediatrician and you've done volunteer work at the children's cancer hospital. Obviously, that will relate better with the pediatrician because that's within their specialty.

You want to be a surgeon and you volunteered in a post-acute care unit of taking care of postsurgical patients or whatever rehabilitation center for postsurgical care. It will speak to a surgeon differently compared to how that would speak to a pediatrician. There's no perfect volunteer experience, but there are certain experiences that can become again an icebreaker.

It can actually speak to your specialty interest and maybe even make you look more competitive. Another thing that you find on there is research experience. And again, you'll have to put in the organization, the position who your supervisor was, the country, sitting in a number of hours and really under description.

This is where you talk about the endpoint. What was the end point of your research? So, “It was conducted a cross-sectional survey of a thousand patients that recovered from COVID trying to determine long hauler syndrome symptoms. Reason for leaving project submitted or project published or project in peer-review or completed project.” Those are all things that you can consider there. Or if you were a research volunteer, maybe you didn't publish, or you’re a facilitator, you could say, “Facilitated”, I think on mine because I did work as a research facilitator was on the research experience. I put the John H Georgia hospital of Chicago, physician research facilitator, put my attending's name who was my supervisor. I put the country, province, city, number of hours, description. “Research facilitator for fecal immunochemical testing as a tool for colon cancer screening. Period. Educated patients on test utility and follow ups. Reason for leaving, completed project or submitted project.” Whatever that was. That's another area that you don't want to miss out on so start thinking about your work experience. Thinking about your research experience, thinking about your prior volunteer experience, and how you can best describe those. 

You have months. You have May, June, July, August, even to up to the first part of September to create three sentences, three to four sentences that describe these experiences. You have time to do it. Don't feel like you need to know, figure it all out now during this webinar because this will be here for you. You can think about it. You can sleep on it. And the words will come to you. You have the words. You're smart, you're intelligent. You have made it through medical school. You can definitely describe what you've done without me or anybody else having to review it.

You can do this on your own. That's really what I'm trying to empower you today, to remember. You've already done the work. You just have to represent it on the form, because if you don't capture the work on this form, nobody would know that you did it. And if you sit there and undermine the work that you've already done because you think it's not valuable enough, you could be missing out on an opportunity to wow somebody. You could be missing out an opportunity to have what somebody else will find interesting because you don't find it interesting, doesn't mean that it's not valuable. 

Was your medical education interrupted or extended? That's that question I was talking about where you asked about whether medical education was extended or interrupted. And we've already talked about how to answer that so we'll move on. 

Licensure. If you have medical licenses, again, this is for PGY-2 and on. For those who would apply into preliminary programs or transitional programs, a preliminary program is a one-year program that is preliminary, meaning it is before the next thing.

And what that means is you only get a one-year contract much like an intern year, and then you still have to go back into the match cycle to apply for a second-year spot. You may already have a medical license because you're PGY-1 has been completed in another state. And so that's where you'll put this information.

And then, “Had your medical license ever been revoked?” Obviously, if that's the case, you'll include that. If you've been in a malpractice case, you're going to include that. If you've ever had any conditions that limit your ability to receive hostile privileges, you'll disclose that. Please be honest. If you've ever been convicted of a misdemeanor, please include that.

If you feel like you have any questions, maybe you're not located in the US and you're like, “What's a misdemeanor?” Just look it up on the internet. It describes very easily what that is. If you have one, you would know. If you don't know what it is, you probably don't have one.

“Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” If you have a felony, you will know. “Are you able to carry out responsibilities of a resident?” Usually, again, this is just some general cognitive questions. Obviously it's a yes for most of us on here. I think all of us. If you're board certified, maybe you've been board certified previously.

So for those that are going back into applying to a new specialty after having received board certification in another specialty, that's why you indicate that. If you have a DEA number, again, this is for people who have been through training once before we will have a DEA number. Most IMGs that are starting out don't have a DEA number so don't worry about it. 

Publications. So again, if your article was published, it had a title. You're going to take that title as is. You're not going to alter it and you're going to put it on here and you're going to put the publication name just as it is. The authors, just as it is. So if you were the second author, don't try to tweak it now to make you the first author.

You know how when you go on PubMed and you're trying to copy a citation? You're going to use that same format and just paste it on here without altering anything. The issue number, the page that you were in, whatever that is. You're just going to represent it as it is. Don't try to make it look better than what it was, or don't try to make it look worse than what it was. So just put it as it is.

Peer-reviewed journals other than published. These are ones that have not yet been published. Maybe they're still in the process of review. You've submitted them and they've been accepted. You can put that on here. 

Peer-reviewed book chapter. So this actually has to be a peer-reviewed book, just not a book that you wrote necessarily. That could go under hobbies or interests or other accomplishments. But this is an actual peer review book chapter. So other physicians in your specialty review this chapter, and you're going to put that on there. 

A scientific monograph. So this could be, I think this can even apply if you have a scientific monograph, whether it's in medical school, even prior to some of you have been in bio, or other biosciences that allowed you to create monographs. And so you can put that on there, published in nature. Great.

Other articles. This is where I think if you have any publications. Personally, whether they're medical-related or not. The fact that it was published, I think that you should put on there because it's your work, you did it.

Poster presentation, same thing. You're going to put the poster title, the event meeting. So maybe it was ACP virtual conference. So even those of you that are presenting virtually, please indicate that. The country will be where the city will be, where the meeting was being held. A lot of times you presented at a virtual conference, but it was supposed to have been, in San Francisco or wherever. You're going to put where the event meeting was hosted from.

Oral presentation. Same thing, oral presentation's usually, again, I caution you, if you did a short verbal presentation to your chief resident or to your attending during rounds, that's not an oral presentation. If you just talk to your friends about something in a group, that's not an oral presentation. It has to be something that maybe you did at grand rounds, something that is easily verifiable. If it's not verifiable, at least you did have evidence that you did this presentation in front of a grand rounds, mobility and mortality report, or a podium presentation at a conference, those are oral presentations. So just not the fact that you presented a case during rounds, that doesn't count.

Peer-reviewed online publication. This did not go in print, but it went online. You're going to put that on there and you're going to get the URL. For those who used to use the StatPearls, and then there's another one called cereus, C-E-R-E-U-S, that students would go on and get easy publications by writing, maybe review articles and things like that and it was only published on the internet. Then you can put that on there, but I remember it has to be peer-reviewed. So if a physician reviewed it and they told you it was a peer-reviewed article. If you're not sure if your online publication is peer-reviewed, ask the online publisher if this is a peer-reviewed piece. That's the best way to know. 

If it's non-peer-reviewed, then you put it on this other non-peer-reviewed, because you don't want to misrepresent stuff. The best way to know if what you're doing is in line is ask the publisher. Ask them, “What does this fall? Does this fall under a non-peer-reviewed or peer-reviewed?”

Then that brings us to the very end because you're going to certify your form. And then once you do, you will submit it. The good thing about the ERAS form is you can save it as a PDF and you can have your mentors, your supervisors review it and see if you need to do anything differently or represent anything, put anything differently in or in different words.

So that being said we'll go ahead and switch to a meeting so that we could take questions.